"We recognize that drilling is going to happen," Velinsky said. "There are a lot of pluses for it to happen. . . . But, hopefully, it can be done in an environmentally sensitive way."
In the academy's preliminary study, a University of Pennsylvania graduate student, Frank Anderson, studied nine small watersheds in northeastern Pennsylvania.
All were similar in terms of land use and the size of the streams. But they differed in one primary area - the amount of natural-gas drilling.
Three watersheds had no drilling.
Three others had what the researchers described as a low density of drilling, which is one to three wells per square kilometer of land area.
The other three had a high density of drilling, or four to eight wells per square kilometer.
A square kilometer is slightly more than a third of the area of a square mile.
Anderson then measured the conductivity of the water and assessed the abundance of salamanders, mayflies, caddis flies, and stone flies.
Now, the researchers want to conduct a two-year study and expand the sampling from nine streams to 36, said Jerry Mead, a systems ecologist with the Patrick Center who worked closely with Anderson.
"If drilling is restricted to a certain density," Mead said, "maybe we can have some drilling and get the benefits for society and not have a huge impact on the stream system and all the services it provides people."
Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 215-854-5147 or sbauers@phillynews.com. Visit her blog at http://go.philly.com/greenspace.
