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Unnatural landscapes in ecology: generating the spatial distribution of brine spills
Author(s) -
Jager Henriette I.,
Efroymson Rebecca A.,
Sublette Kerry L.,
Ashwood Tom L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
environmetrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.68
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-095X
pISSN - 1180-4009
DOI - 10.1002/env.730
Subject(s) - oil spill , environmental science , spatial distribution , brine , ecology , hydrology (agriculture) , computer science , geography , geology , environmental engineering , geotechnical engineering , remote sensing , biology , physics , thermodynamics
Abstract Quantitative tools are needed to evaluate the ecological effects of increasing petroleum production. In this article, we describe two stochastic models for simulating the spatial distribution of brine spills on a landscape. One model uses general assumptions about the spatial arrangement of spills and their sizes; the second model distributes spills by siting rectangular well complexes and conditioning spill probabilities on the configuration of pipes. We present maps of landscapes with spills produced by the two methods and compare the ability of the models to reproduce a specified spill area. A strength of the models presented here is their ability to extrapolate from the existing landscape to simulate landscapes with a higher (or lower) density of oil wells. Published in 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.