USING LIDAR TO LOCATE HISTORIC DRILLING AND CHARCOAL PRODUCTION SITES IN PENNSYLVANIA

Data from the Pennsylvania light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data acquisition program was processed in geographic information system (GIS) software to identify historic energy production sites that are now difficult to locate due to past land use or revegetation. The remains of the Greenwood charcoal iron furnace, active between 1834 and 1904, are located in northeastern Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. The community of Greenwood Furnace was a busy industrial complex based on iron production, and included the production of large amounts of charcoal from the surrounding forests. Many individual hearths, which were flat, cleared areas where wood was stacked and prepared for charcoal production, are known to be present on the mountain slopes around the furnace, but relatively few have been specifically identified. The charcoal hearths were readily viewed in shaded relief images of the LiDAR digital elevation model (DEM) as circular features resembling small craters. Strings of hearths were readily evident along similar topographic contour lines on the adjacent hillsides. More than 500 historic charcoal hearths were easily identified in a 40 square mile area surrounding Greenwood Furnace. In a second application, we used LiDAR to identify the location of individual historic oil and gas well sites within the McDonald oil field, west of Pittsburgh, PA. The fields were discovered beginning in 1888 and reached their peak production in 1891, producing over 45 million barrels of oil over a 50 year lifespan. The identification of well sites using LiDAR correlated well with magnetic anomalies associated with buried well casings. The location of these old wells may be critical to the environmental integrity of the region during the preparation and production of newer unconventional gas wells being drilled in the Marcellus shale.