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<\/a>In southern Wyoming, the continental divide splits to form an enormous arid basin marked by vast sand dunes and grey, alkali lakes. The largest unfenced area in the lower 48, this region is known by Wyomingites as the Red Desert.<\/p>\nThe Red Desert stretches across 4 million acres in south central Wyoming. It is home to the largest herd of pronghorn in the continental U.S., the largest desert elk herd, and the longest migrating mule deer herd in North America. Nearly three quarters of the area is covered by sagebrush grassland, and sage-grouse leks are present in much of the region. In the Red Desert’s northeastern corner, a series of alkali lakes known as the Chain Lakes provide critical wetland oasis for migrating shorebirds like ducks, trumpeter swans and white pelicans.<\/p>\n
What differentiates the Red Desert from Wyoming’s other iconic landscapes is the rapidly increasing land use for energy development.<\/p>\n
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[Tweet “How new tech can improve energy development planning and wildlife conservation throughout Wyoming\u2019s Red Desert.”]<\/p>\n
What is happening to the Red Desert?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Red Desert used to house a vast lake that, over millions of years, collected organic matter in a way that created rich deposits of coal-bed methane, coal, and an immense oil-shale formation. Because of this, an estimated 84 percent of the region has been leased or developed by extractive\u00a0industries.<\/p>\n One area of dramatic development, which has been permitted in waves since the 1980s, is the Continental Divide-Creston project. The newest wave of development is an additional proposed 9,000 wells in a region already pock-marked by oil and gas development. On top of this, hundreds of oil and gas related applications have been sent to BLM offices that oversee the Red Desert since 2017.<\/p>\n With oil and gas development, along with wind and other infrastructure development, the landscape of the Red Desert is rapidly changing. Locals, government organizations, and other stakeholders are racing to understand the real effects of these changes.<\/p>\n Fortunately, new technologies are allowing us to paint a clearer picture of what\u2019s happening to the landscape.<\/p>\n Satellites provide real-time data on oil and gas impacts<\/strong><\/p>\n My colleagues and our partners are capitalizing on new platforms for satellite imagery analysis, such as Google Earth Engine, which pulls from a 5-petabyte database of satellite imagery that is updated in real time and processes images on the cloud. This imagery provides a trove of data on the spread of development in a region, and can track ongoing development in real time.<\/p>\n