Fracking research: the only way is ethics

By Liam Herringshaw (@fossiliam)

Britain for shale? (Image from Wikimedia Commons, via DECC)

If the contentions of the UK government's energy policy are summed up in a single word, it's probably this one: fracking. According to the August 2015 government survey of public opinions about energy, 28% of UK people are opposed to it, 21% of people support it, and 46% neither oppose nor support it (I'm not sure what the other 5% think!).

Originally a shorthand for the process of hydraulically fracturing low permeability rocks – particularly shales – to extract hydrocarbons from them, the term 'fracking' has evolved and mutated. To some, it is a byword for energy independence and prosperity. To others, it is a swear word of greed and pollution. Fracking is now so variously (mis)used and (mis)understood that it's often hard to know exactly what it encompasses.

If fracking has issues of semantics, then the subject has clearly not been communicated very well. This is a consequence of many factors, but two are particularly pertinent: a lack of fundamental research, and a reluctance of experts to speak out about what is correct or incorrect, and what is known or unknown.

The latter is a consequence of the former. Most people – geologists included – know little about shales, or shale gas, or fracking; only recently have they become a focus of much scientific attention. Even if you are an expert, the need to try and bring sense into the debate is often counter-balanced by the chastening experience of sticking your head above the parapet. Nonetheless, we should try to provide information whenever we can.

Carboniferous shales in the Peak District, UK (Photo by Liam Herringshaw / ReFINE)

Despite all the recent hype about Britain's onshore shale gas potential, for example, we actually know very little about the deep geology of the country's shale basins. Only multi-disciplinary investigations, gathering and interpreting large datasets and then communicating the findings to the public, can help address such uncertainties. But how should research into fracking be funded? And what ethical issues are raised?

If you're implacably opposed to shale gas extraction, you might argue that there should be no funding at all. Since the combustion of fossil fuels is a key driver of climate change, using new techniques to extract and burn them is wrong, and shouldn't happen. That argument has been made to me at meetings I've attended.

Most people, however, recognize the need for peer-reviewed scientific research, even if they are opposed to unconventional hydrocarbon extraction. Fracking is already happening, and will continue to happen. Many impacts – positive and negative – have been claimed on its behalf, but few have been proven with empirical data. To properly inform the debate we need more facts about fracks.

ReFINE - Researching Fracking In Europe

To this end, the main project I have been involved with over the last couple of years is ReFINE (Researching Fracking In Europe). Led by Newcastle and Durham universities, with contributions from many other institutions (including GEES at Hull), ReFINE aims to investigate the key topics of public concern and communicate the findings as widely as possible.

 

As the consortium is part-funded by the hydrocarbon industry, though, there were concerns that the public would see ReFINE as potentially biased. A unique set of ethical procedures were therefore put in place to ensure that funders did not have direct influence over the research outputs. These are:

• Peer review – all ReFINE papers are submitted to recognized journals for peer review by scholars not involved in the project;
• Disclosures of interest – all members of the project are required to declare any current or past interests that may compromise their impartiality;
• Independent Science Board – comprising impartial scientific researchers from across the world, the Independent Science Board (ISB) directs and oversees all ReFINE research, ensuring it is accurate, relevant, and free from industry bias;
• Offsite archives – correspondence and data relating to the project are recorded using a secure email archive, and made publicly available on request.

No matter how transparent you attempt to be, there will always be those who regard your work with suspicion. Perhaps the best indication of independence is when pro- and anti-fracking groups both perceive your findings as supporting their opponents' position. Having been described as 'frackademics' after publishing one peer-reviewed publication, and then 'nettle wine tasters' after publishing another, members of ReFINE are certainly discovering this.

Ethics are an increasingly important consideration in research projects, particularly those investigating contentious topics. I've not been involved in a project like ReFINE before, with such a detailed ethics policy, but it is surely the right approach. As researchers we need to demonstrate that we are engaging properly with issues of trust and impartiality, especially in relation to funding. As the most recent ReFINE publication has also demonstrated, we must discuss fracking with the public using non-technical language. Only then will people begin to be able to make more informed decisions about the real risks.

ReFINE will be a case study in a future issue of the journal Research Ethics, subject to final approval. To find out more about the project, visit http://refine.org.uk/.

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA: THE DIFFICULTIES OF DEFINING ESTUARIES.

By Sally Little (@estuary_ecology)

I am an estuarine ecologist, which means that I study the relationship between organisms and their environment in areas of the coast where freshwater rivers meet the saltwater flood of the tide. Estuaries are interesting because they are naturally dynamic, high-energy environments, characterised by a specific flora and fauna. Physical processes operating on both short (e.g. tidal cycles) and long (e.g. climate and sea level change) timescales form the driving forces for many of the complex processes that occur in these systems. This means that estuaries are sites of continuous change, experiencing chemical (e.g. salinity, dissolved gases and nutrients), sedimentary (e.g. turbidity maximum), hydrological (e.g. tidal and freshwater flow) and morphological variations over daily tidal cycles.  Few plants and animals can withstand the extremes of these constantly fluctuating regimes, but those that can, commonly achieve high numbers, making estuaries some of the most important and productive ecosystems in the world.

The Humber Estuary, UK from the International Space Station - courtesy of @Cmdr_Hadfield

A miniature estuary at Sanna on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, North-West Scotland.

Estuaries (arguably more than any other aquatic ecosystem) are at the pinnacle of the human-environment interface – providing sheltered locations for habitation with access to inland, coastal and offshore resources and thus acting as focal points of human settlement and development throughout history.  For example, 10% of the global population (640 million people in the year 2000) live in the lower elevation coastal zone (LECZ; land below 10 m), which covers just 2% of the world’s total land area. This area contains two-thirds of the world’s megacities (population in excess of 10 million people) and more than 10% of the world’s wealth. As such, estuaries are subject to dense populations, development pressures and intensely exploited resources; with issues such as pollution, nutrient enrichment, habitat loss and over-exploitation extremely common in these systems today - pressures which are likely to increase with global population growth.

The megacity of Shanghai in China is located on the Yangtze River Estuary - the third largest river in the world

The megacity of New York has grown around the Hudson River Estuary - the Mahican name of the river (muh-he-kun-ne-tuk) represents its partly estuarine nature as "the river that flows both ways"

In addition to human pressures, estuaries and coastal zones are particularly vulnerable to climate change (e.g. including eustatic sea level rise, changes in weather patterns and extreme events). It is therefore important to manage both the impact of human activities and future global climate change upon estuarine ecosystems, though this has raised one of the fundamental issues in estuarine research – what is an estuary?

Traditionally, we, as estuarine scientists, have used the ‘expert-view’ definition that “if it looks like an estuary, smells like an estuary and behaves like an estuary, then there is a good chance that it is an estuary”! However, when we increasingly have to provide information to lawyers, planners and policy makers and are required to rigorously defend our terms in courts of law, the repercussions of poor definitions may be legally and economically costly – therefore everything becomes a little more tricky. For example, a recent court appeal case (12 April 2011) between Western Ferries (Clyde) Limited and The Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) concerning liability to pay corporation tax, highlighted the problem of a lack of a legal definition of an estuary in the UK. Western Ferries asserted that they operated a crossing outside the Clyde estuary and harbour limits, therefore should be taxed under ‘tonnage’ rather than ‘corporation' tax regulations – at stake was a cool £3 million. The judgement considered a variety of definitions of an estuary, from both scientific literature, management directives and evidence from expert witnesses, one of which included the eminent estuarine scientist Dr Donald McLusky. However, even then the definition of an estuary was not clear-cut and proved problematic to establish on a legal basis.

Gourock and the Firth of Clyde, North-West Scotland

The issue is that estuaries are extremely difficult to define. That is not to say that there aren’t any definitions, in fact there are over forty definitions of an estuary, the majority of which are based upon physical characteristics and all of which differ based upon the research discipline and geographical location of the defining author.  There is however no one definition that provides universal coverage for all the estuaries in the world.

This is the crux of the problem. Whilst estuaries can be characterised in similar ways (e.g. freshwater input, tidally influenced with a salinity gradient), each is physically and biologically different. Often, the further apart estuaries are geographically, the more different they become. The majority of estuaries in the Northern hemisphere, for example, have a tidal range of greater than 4 metres (macrotidal), free connection to the sea, significant freshwater river input and a salinity gradient from fresh to marine waters. In contrast, from a global perspective, very few brackish coastal water bodies match these archetypal classical estuaries of Northern Europe, where the majority of estuarine research has taken place.  In Australia and South Africa for example, a growing number of scientists argue that coastal systems such as intermittently open and closed coastal lagoons and lakes be included in the definition of an estuarine ecosystem.  In these often microtidal (tidal range <2 m), arid systems, tidal and freshwater input can be negligible giving rise to temporarily open/closed systems, where evaporation can lead to hyperhaline areas (salinity greater than 35).  In these systems, the mouth is often marked by physiographic forms (e.g. a sand bar) which serve to close off the estuary from the sea for at least part of the year. However, during these closed phases, these systems have been shown to function normally as estuaries prior to re-opening. Interestingly, even though both South Africa and Australia have legal definitions of an estuary (in contrast to the UK), neither cater for hyperhalinity.

The temporarily open/closed East Kleinemonde Estuary in South Africa (picture courtesy of Michael J Stone)

The temporarily open/closed Brega River Estuary in New South Wales, Australia

To avoid these problems of definition, legislators are increasingly developing new conservation, socioeconomic and legal definitions and classification systems for estuaries – the most widely accepted of which (in Europe at least) is the term ‘transitional waters’ coined by the European Union within the Water Framework Directive (WFD) to define all waters that are neither the open coast or true freshwaters (i.e. fjords, fjards, river mouths, deltas, rias and lagoons as well as the more classical estuaries).  Additional legal definitions have been developed for estuaries worldwide.  The problem with all of these definitions however, is that more often than not, they do not delimit where an estuary starts and where it ends – an issue which will be the subject of my next blog!