abandoned

Abandoned farmland and the environment

September 4, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Abandoned farmland has been increasing dramatically in recent decades. Estimates are that a billion acres – an area half the size of Australia – have been relinquished from cultivation globally. While more and more of the tropics have been cultivated in recent times, the global amount of land used for agriculture has been in decline since 2001. In the past 30 years, arable land in the United States has declined by almost a sixth. The situation in Europe is similar. Huge amounts of the former Soviet Union now lie abandoned.

Farmland is abandoned for various reasons. It may suffer from damaged soil so that crop yields are too low to be worth the effort. Farm owners may become too old or be physically unable to continue farming. Many younger people head for jobs in the cities and more attractive opportunities. Wars, natural and man-made disasters, and political turmoil have all contributed.

Another form of largely ignored lands are so-called degraded forests. These are forests that were logged in the past but are no longer productive and aren’t protected either. These places also represent unused land with great potential value.

Ecologists point to the potential of these lands as neglected resources for rewilding efforts, improving biodiversity, and for increasing natural ways to capture carbon. Left to its own devices, nature will usually reclaim abandoned places. This generally provides benefits for biodiversity and climate. But mapping, studying, managing, and protecting the increasingly vast tracts of abandoned land could increase their potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and the restoration of species and their habitats.

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Abandoned Lands: A Hidden Resource for Restoring Biodiversity

Photo, posted January 26, 2023, courtesy of Larry Syverson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Artificial intelligence and lost oil wells

January 2, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There have been commercial oil and gas wells across the United States for 170 years. Researchers estimate that there are between two and three million wells that have been abandoned. There are hundreds of thousands of them, across 27 states, that are “orphaned,” meaning that they are uncapped, unproductive, and nobody is responsible to manage their leakage or pollution.

Many are undocumented orphaned wells – UOWs – that are not listed in formal records and are basically out of sight and out of mind. Besides having nobody responsible for them, nobody even knows where they are. But they are potential sources of oil and chemical leaks into nearby water sources and can send toxic substances like benzene and hydrogen sulfide into the air.

Researchers are using modern tools like drones, laser imaging, and advanced sensors to try to locate UOWs. But these wells are scattered over an area of more than three million square miles.

To better predict where to look for undocumented wells, researchers are combining historical topographic maps with artificial intelligence. The US Geological Survey has scanned 190,000 topographic maps made between 1884 and 2006. AI is being used to find the symbols for oil and gas wells on the maps. People can recognize these symbols easily, but there are just too many maps to look at. The problem is equivalent to finding a needle in a haystack; there is just an awful lot of hay to look through.

Abandoned wells are a big problem and it will take lots of modern technology to try to solve it.

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AI Helps Researchers Dig Through Old Maps to Find Lost Oil and Gas Wells

Photo, posted August 16, 2022, courtesy of Larry Syverson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Geological thermal energy storage

August 7, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The electricity grid is increasingly using solar and wind power. Depending on those two sources requires the ability to store energy to have on hand when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Energy needs to be stored away to be used hours, days, or even weeks after it is produced.

Energy storage is booming. California has increased its energy storage capacity tenfold in recent times. One day in April, storage batteries were the largest source of electricity in the state for a period of two hours. But batteries are not the only way to store energy. There are chemical, electrochemical, mechanical, and thermal methods that each has potential advantages and unique features.

A project in Kern County, California, is making use of an abandoned oil field to create a long-term energy storage installation. The plan is to retrofit depleted oil wells to store concentrated solar energy in superheated groundwater for long periods of time. The stored heat can then be used to drive turbines when electricity is needed.

Some 1,200 feet below the surface of the oil field are pockets of permeable sandstone that have been emptied of the oil they previously contained. An array of parabolic mirrors will gather solar energy that will heat silicon oil in an underground loop to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil pipeline will heat up groundwater down below. When electricity is needed, the heated groundwater will be brought to the surface to operate turbines.

There is no new technology involved. The individual aspects have never all been combined before, but the likelihood of success is high. There are lots of depleted oil fields that could be used this way in the future.

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Can a California Oilfield Be Retrofitted to Store Solar Energy?

Photo, posted July 18, 2017, courtesy of John Ciccarelli / BLM via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Storing carbon underground and abandoned wells

April 18, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Using government support in the form of subsidies and tax credits, energy companies and others are planning to capture millions of tons of industrial carbon dioxide emissions and pipe the greenhouse gas into underground storage. It is a strategy enthusiastically supported by the fossil fuel industry because it allows them to keep burning the stuff.

There are currently 69 projects being reviewed by federal and state regulators seeking to store CO2 underground. The sorts of places where carbon dioxide can be injected are geologic zones containing porous rock formations which, in no way coincidentally, are the same places where oil and gas deposits are found. As a result, these places are studded with abandoned wells that have accumulated over the past century.

In Louisiana, there are about 120,000 abandoned wells that overlie geological zones that could store carbon dioxide. Environmental watchdog groups have identified numerous abandoned wells within a few miles of proposed storage sites.

The problem is that abandoned wells leak – even ones that have been plugged – and many haven’t been. The question is how much leakage will occur and what will be the consequences of the leakage. In Texas, pumping oilfield wastewater into abandoned wells has led to geysers of toxic water, artificial saline lakes, and earthquakes.

Underground carbon dioxide sequestering on a scale large enough to really matter will have to extend to very large areas. For example, injecting 100 million tons per year could create a pressurized zone as large as 100 miles. How large a problem this might create from abandoned wells in the zone is not at all clear but cannot be ignored.

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Companies Are Poised to Inject Millions of Tons of Carbon Underground. Will It Stay Put?

Photo, posted December 3, 2023, courtesy of Jason Woodhead via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Cleaning Up Abandoned Wells | Earth Wise

March 3, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are 130,000 documented abandoned oil and gas wells in the US, according to the Department of the Interior. The key word is documented. According to an EPA study in 2018, the actual number of abandoned wells could be as high as two or three million. According to an analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund and McGill University, about nine million people in the United States live within a mile of one of these wells.

Some of these wells might be fairly harmless, and others might be quite dangerous. Wells can emit a variety of gasses, including methane, which is a far stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Leaking wells are a major source of air and groundwater pollution. Apart from methane, substances such as arsenic can continue to leak from wells even after they are no longer operational.

At the end of January, the Biden Administration announced a series of new actions to tackle methane pollution. Among these measures is $1.15 billion in funds from the Department of the Interior that states can use to seal up abandoned oil and gas wells. That funding comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in November, which sets aside $4.7 billion for a federal program dedicated to orphaned wells.

Addressing the largely ignored problem of abandoned wells is important from the standpoint of climate pollution as well as human health. Efforts to plug the wells will also provide high-paying jobs

Other methane-reduction measures include increased enforcement from the Department of Transportation on reducing pipelines leaks, research funding for limiting methane emissions from beef and dairy farming, and technical assistance from the Department of Energy on well-plugging efforts.

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Photo, posted March 23, 2011, courtesy of David Stone via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Menace Of Abandoned Oil Wells | Earth Wise

August 3, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

More than a century of oil and gas drilling has left behind millions of abandoned wells and many of them are leaching pollutants into the air and water. Drilling companies continue to abandon even more wells as demand for oil diminishes and bankruptcies become more common.

Leaks from abandoned wells have long been known to be an environmental problem and a health hazard. They have been linked to many instances of groundwater contamination and to dangerous fumes near homes and farms.

There have recently been efforts to track the amounts of methane leaching from abandoned oil and gas wells, and the figures in United States are alarming. According to the most recent EPA report, more than 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells emitted a total of 281,000 tons of methane in 2018. That is the climate-damage equivalent of consuming about 16 million barrels of crude oil, which is as much as the U.S. uses in a typical day. According to the EPA, the actual amount could be as much as three times higher, because of incomplete data. The agency believes that most of the methane comes from more than 2 million abandoned wells that were never properly plugged.

New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation has records of over 2,000 abandoned wells, but the state believes the actual number could be much higher. This is a problem that won’t just go away. Wells don’t leak for a year and then stop. They can continue to leak for a century or more. Cleaning up and plugging an abandoned well runs from $20,000 to $145,000, meaning that countrywide, cleaning up this environmental menace could cost somewhere between $60 billion and $435 billion.

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Special Report: Millions of abandoned oil wells are leaking methane, a climate menace

Photo, posted October 13, 2015, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Value Of Abandoned Agricultural Lands | Earth Wise

February 18, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It is perhaps surprising to learn that more land is now being abandoned by farming than converted to it. In fact, abandonment of rural lands has become one of the most dramatic planet-wide changes of the modern era, affecting millions of square miles of land.

In part, it is due to rural flight driven by the economic, social, and educational appeal of cities. It is also a result of climate change and the globalization of the food supply chain. The global footprint of agriculture has been decreasing over the past twenty years but the global food supply isn’t shrinking. The lost land has generally been marginal and farming elsewhere has become more productive.

Many researchers see abandoned agricultural lands as a huge opportunity for ecological restoration and strengthening of biodiversity. Others see these lands as an opportunity for a massive program to plant trees to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A recent study published in Science estimated that planting trees on abandoned agricultural lands could remove 25% of the carbon dioxide humans have added to the atmosphere.

There are strong criticisms to all of these ideas. In most cases, the studies don’t incorporate the social context of why these lands are in transition, the potential effects on local populations, whether the lands are publicly or privately owned, and whether lands now suitable for regeneration will remain so as climate change advances.

Current government initiatives on degraded lands typically lack even rudimentary planning. There are real opportunities presented by the vast amounts of abandoned agricultural lands, but there are many caveats and many issues to confront. As a society, we have barely begun to even think about what to do.

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Could Abandoned Agricultural Lands Help Save the Planet?

Photo, posted May 9, 2010. courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.