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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Richard DaviesORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Royal Society of Chemistry. There is a need for the development of effective baselines against which the water quality impacts of new developments can be assessed. The specific conductance of flowback water from shale gas operations is typically many times the specific conductance of surface water and near-surface groundwater. This contrast in specific conductance means that specific conductance could be the ideal determinand for detecting water quality impacts from shale gas extraction. If specific conductance is to be used for detecting the impacts of shale gas operations, then a baseline of specific conductance in water bodies is required. Here, Bayesian hierarchical modelling of specific conductance was applied across English groundwater. The modelling used existing, spot-sampled data from the years 2000 to 2018 from 537 unique borehole locations. When the differences between boreholes was considered, then the approach was sufficiently sensitive to detect 1% mixing of fracking fluid in groundwater at a 95% confidence interval. The Bayesian hierarchical modelling maximises the return on public investment and provides a means by which future observations can be judged. This journal is
Author(s): Worrall F, Davies RJ, Hart A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts
Year: 2021
Volume: 23
Issue: 8
Pages: 1116-1129
Print publication date: 01/08/2021
Online publication date: 18/06/2021
Acceptance date: 10/05/2021
Date deposited: 07/09/2021
ISSN (print): 2050-7887
ISSN (electronic): 2050-7895
Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
URL: https://doi.org/10.1039/d0em00440e
DOI: 10.1039/d0em00440e
PubMed id: 34190221
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