The Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) provided a grant to Cornell University Environmental Engineers to study how the region’s surface freshwater supply and the health of natural systems delivering this resource have been impacted and may be altered in the coming years under increasing water withdrawals.
The research focuses on the Marcellus Shale region in the Central Appalachians, including portions of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. In addition to considering the cumulative impacts of water withdrawals, the researchers looked at specific impacts of large water withdrawals with hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale region as one example.
Datasets include Marcellus fish data points, Marcellus stream data points, water withdrawals in the Marcellus region, stream impacts data (including boundary files, MARIS sampling locations, NHFAP, catchments, streamlines, physiographic provinces, permitted wells, risk analysis, TNC basin characteristics, USGS gage locations, and MARIS fish database MARIS additions.
