Alaska’s North Slope region, located between the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean, provides critical habitat for a variety of wildlife including a globally significant abundance of waterfowl, shorebirds, and raptors. However, the region is also home to the sprawling Prudhoe Bay industrial complex, the largest oil field in North America. Industry infrastructure covers thousands of acres with wells, gravel roads, air strips, gravel pads, and pipelines. This network of infrastructure and human activity has significant ecological impacts, especially as operations continue to expand.
The Summer of Maps fellow will leverage remote sensing and database management skills to identify areas of potential conflict between key wildlife areas and industrial infrastructure. The fellow will develop and apply remote sensing algorithms to extract roads, gravel pads, pipelines, and other tundra disturbance from orthoimagery. These data will be integrated with historical infrastructure to generate a comprehensive depiction of Arctic oil development.
Audubon has an infrastructure geodatabase updated through 2014. Datasets include:
Audubon Alaska has access to 2.5m-resolution orthoimagery hosted by the State of Alaska, and has generated key wildlife areas for caribou, fish, and birds as part of previous analyses.
The final products of the North Slope infrastructure analysis would include a current geodatabase of point, line, and polygon features containing data on the construction date and owner. A series of maps would highlight areas of conflict between existing and planned infrastructure and ecological impacts to habitat, birds, and other wildlife. A map or series of maps would be developed at fine scale of the Teshepuk Lake region, an area providing habitat for tens of thousands of molting geese, rendered flightless as they regrow primary feathers.
The maps will be used to inform oil and gas development decisions through public comment periods for proposed developments and changes to management plans. The maps may help relocate future infrastructure development away from critical caribou calving grounds or key molting goose areas around Teshepuk, as well as inform Audubon Alaska’s landscape-scale strategy. The proposed maps would complement a literature review recently completed by Audubon on the ecological impacts of roads and aircraft in the Western Arctic.
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