Land Change A Bakken Oil Boom, North Dakota, USA story
Cities
Mining
Thousands of well pads are scattered across northwestern North Dakota. This series of images shows an example of a location with several of them. These rectangular shaped areas of land cover 4–7 acres each. The small bright shapes in the images are much smaller than agricultural fields. Cropland is larger blocks of land in varying shades of green or tan.
The parcel of land dedicated to oil pumping is cleared for setting up drilling equipment. Once drilling is completed at a location, it can then pump oil. Each pad seen in the images is a well pad with either drilling or pumping in progress.
In the entire Williston Basin, 12,990 hectares of land have been converted to well pads. The previous land cover of this area was almost entirely agriculture and prairie.
Location
July 25, 2002, Landsat 7 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
July 1, 2008, Landsat 5 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
Aug. 8, 2010, Landsat 5 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
Aug. 27, 2011, Landsat 5 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
Aug. 16, 2013, Landsat 8 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
Aug. 19, 2014, Landsat 8 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
July 26, 2017, Landsat 8 (path/row 34/26) — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
July 31, 2017, Sentinel-2A — Well pads, North Dakota, USA
Bakken Oil Boom, North Dakota, USA Additional Imagery & Stories
Pad Drilling
A new drilling technique called pad drilling reduces the overall footprint of land cover change caused by the industry. Several horizontal well bores ...
Tioga
Tioga is a small town in northwestern North Dakota that has also seen rapid growth. The visible changes in the image series are oil production infrast...
Watford City
Another growing community is Watford City, which built a new high school in 2016, just east of town. In terms of percent increase, Watford City’s grow...
Williston
Located on the north side of a bend in the Missouri River, Williston is one of the larger cities in the center of the oil boom in North Dakota. The ci...