Making critical connections through interdisciplinary analysis: exploring the impacts of Marcellus shale development.

The term 'fracking' simultaneously conjures up images of extractive technologies, community tensions, and stories of overnight wealth and environmental nightmares. The introduction and rapid expansion of hydraulic fracturing technology to develop oil and gas resources in shale plays across the USA has created complex and interrelated socio-economic, biophysical, and geopolitical challenges. In the Marcellus shale region, distinct but interrelated issues of water security, health, energy, and community overlap in the broader socio-ecological system and further illuminate the daunting character of drilling for natural gas and other hydrocarbons. This special issue of the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences intentionally focuses on hydrocarbon development in the Marcellus shale, but situates this dialogue in the context of a broader, transdisciplinary approach to realizing a sustainable energy system. The interdisciplinary research published here examines the far-reaching complexities and consequences of the impacts of rapid, intensive natural resource development, including the role that access to information and inclusion in decision making have in connecting the global to the local facilitating critical evaluation of the long-term sustainability of development decisions at multiple scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]