I would greatly appreciate any key references and information about the impact of this industry and risk of fires and water catchment degradation and contamination to natural high biodiversity areas such as the Royal National Park in Australia. Thank you.
The term you will want to search is Coalbed methane or Coal Bed Methane. This should produce some Google results.
There are coal mines in South Africa and research has focused mostly on the impact on humans. I would suggest that you contact the University of Pretoria, University of Johannesburg and University of Witwatersrand.
It might be also locality influenced by air pollution close to coal mining and its burning for electric power in central Europe.
See: Effect of of deforestation on structure and diversity of small mammal communities in the Moravskoslezske Beskydy Mts (Czech Republic)
Bryja, J., Heroldová, M., Zejda, J.
Acta theriologica 47: 295-306.
As CBM is still relatively new, I think you may have to gauge the pressures posed on biodiversity from studies such as that carried out by Graham Tucker (http://www.ieep.eu/assets/414/conservation_impactsofenergy.pdf) who looked at (admittedly UK) impacts of a variety of energy sources (although not explicitly CBM). Some studies have looked at specific impacts (e.g. Walker, B.L., Naugle, D.E., Doherty, K.E., 2007. Greater sage-grouse population response to energy development and habitat loss. Journal of Wildlife Management 71, 2644-2654 and Bergquist, E., Evangelista, P., Stohlgren, T.J., Alley, N., 2007. Invasive species and coal bed methane development in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 128, 381-394) but they may not map well to Australia.
Thank you all. It does seem to be a highly unstudied area given the large portions of land being licensed to the industry and given its growth pattern as it expands from well to well. 21.3% of New South Wales is under leases now including much our pristine areas and in wildlife corridors. We only get a bit of information from the states where it is much advanced and i often wonder why so little? any thoughts?
I suspect it is because it is still relatively new and it is difficult to identify impacts before they have happened. The attachment (if I have managed to get it on!) shows the number of scientific publications (from UK Web of Science) that have 'coal bed methane' as a topic or in their title (this is not looking for impacts, just about CBM). There were only double figures of papers since 1998. The other difficulty is in valuing biodiversity; it is more heterogeneous and complex than many of the other ecosystem services (e.g. food provision or water quality) and so is not as easy to get a handle on.
thanks David - this approved activity is in all of the water catchment areas for Sydney and prime agricultural land is not really secure either, if the water catchments were secure then the biodiversity would be much more secure - but we're pretty much in the same boat. the health literature is about as sparse as what you are describing. its quite astonishing. I certainly appreciate your response - altho the attachment didn't attach!
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