Modelling Landscape Conservation of Greater Sage-grouse in Relation to Oil and Gas Development

Presenter: Rick Sojda, Research Professor, Department of Computer Science, Montana State University

In this webinar, I describe gathering “reasonable foreseeable development” spatial data from the USDI’s Bureau of Land Management that were available for Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. These data were disparate across the study area, and I chronicle the GIS processes I used for standardizing the data across mapping units to establish consistent and quantitative categories. Maps will be displayed of the number of wells per township as projected in the BLM data. These data are then shown as overlays with the priority areas for conservation for greater sage-grouse. Using the density of the predicted number of wells, I present a regional-scale view of where the effects of development are expected to occur. The constraints to representing this in a spatial model using GIS are also discussed.