What are we doing now? We are currently working on the following:
- Identifying and collecting data from groups collecting water data or from publications of data for any time period from the region of extraction of natural gas from Devonian shale in the PA-WV-NY-NJ-VA-OH region, with an emphasis on PA;
- Working to create a sustainable network among these groups by holding an annual meeting to discuss and organize this data;
- Working with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI) to organize the data that we are collecting into a water database that can be used to establish background concentrations and to assess impacts across the shale gas play region;
- Training graduate students in database development and use for betterment of communities impacted by shale gas extraction;
- Facilitating ALLARM to help community groups in organizing, collecting, and interpreting water data;
- Evaluating hydrogeochemical data using geographic information systems (GIS) that incorporate population and economic data in order to evaluate the potential for public health risk factors.