Penn State Extension is holding a webinar about how shale gas development has impacted agricultural communities.

The hourlong webinar begins at 1 p.m. Thursday and features Gretchen Sneegas, a doctoral degree student with the University of Georgia’s Department of Geography. She has studied the effects of hydraulic fracturing on rural communities, using agriculture as a way to understand how farmers view and make decisions about gas drilling and its impacts on their crops and land. She compares gas development in Pennsylvania to New York.

Oil and gas development have been occurring in Pennsylvania and New York since the 1800s, but horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies were developed recently.

New York has banned hydraulic fracturing, but Pennsylvania has allowed its use and more than 11,500 unconventional wells have been drilled since 2000.

“In the webinar, we’ll look at how this development has affected rural communities where most of this drilling has occurred,” Sneegas said. “With New York and Pennsylvania regulating shale gas development very differently, the study compares the two states to understand the relationship between agriculture, regulation and shale gas development via hydraulic fracturing in the Twin Tiers Region of New York and Pennsylvania.”

The webinar, “Agricultural Production and Shale Gas Development,” is part of Penn State Extension’s Shale Gas Education monthly webinar series. The last webinar in 2018 — “Unconventional Oil and Gas Bringing Trusted Science to Decision-Making” — will be held on Dec. 13 and presented by Donna Vorhees, director of the Energy Research Program for the Health Effects Institute.

That webinar is free, but registration is necessary. To register, visit the Penn State Extension Natural Gas Events webpage at http://extension.psu.edu/natural-resources/natural-gas/event. Previous webinars are available at http://extension.psu.edu/naturalgas.