Ted Auch, PhD, Author at FracTracker Alliance

About Ted Auch, PhD

Dr. Ted Auch, Midwest Program Director

Ted’s primary responsibilities include photographing, mapping, and bringing to light data gaps associated with the waste, water, and land-use footprint of the unconventional oil and gas build-out across the Midwest/Great Lakes region of North America. Ted’s primary interests include frac sand mining, watershed security/resilience, the food-energy nexus, and oil and gas waste production, transport, and disposal.

Ted's most recent peer-review publications include:

1. Bratman, Auch, Stinchfield. 2022. Energy Security, International Investment, and Democracy: The Case of the United States Shale Oil and Gas Industry. Development and Change. Spring 2022
2. Stinchfield, Auch, and Bratman. 2020. Energy Security, International Investment, and Democracy: The Case of the United States Shale Oil and Gas Industry. Democracy and Security. Volume 16(4) pages 309-333.
3. 2. Bratman, Auch, and Stinchfield. 2020. Energy Independence, International Investment, and Self-Determination: The Environmental Justice Impact of the Unconventional Oil & Gas Industry in the Ohio River Valley. International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Conference 2019, Honolulu, March 25th-28th
4. Strube, Thiede, and Auch. 2021. Proposed Pipelines and Environmental Justice: Exploring the Association between Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Pipeline Proposals in the United States. Rural Sociology. 86(4) 647-672.
5. Palmer, R.C., Short, D., and Auch, W.E. 2019. The Human Right to Water and Unconventional Energy. In Regulating Water Security in Unconventional Oil and Gas, Eds. Buono, R.M., Gunn, E.L., McKay, Staddon, C., Springer, Chapter 3, Pgs. 39-67.
6. Stinchfield, B., Bratman, E., and W.A. Auch. 2019. Energy Independence, International Investment, and Self-Determination: The Case of the US Shale Industry. International Security Studies Section (ISSS) of International Studies Association (ISA) and the International Security and Arms Control Section of APSA (IS) Annual Conference 2019, Denver, October 18th-19th
7. Palmer, R.C., Short, D., and Auch, W.E.2018. The Human Right to Water and Unconventional Energy. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 15(9), 1858.
8. Malone, Kelso, Auch, Edelstein, Ferrar, and Jalbert. 2015. Data Inconsistencies from States with Unconventional Oil and Gas Activity. Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A. 250, pages 489-498.
His aerial photography and drone work has appeared in the following: Yale Environment E360, Oil Change International, Belt Magazine, SAPIENS, LightHawk Journal, ACRES Magazine, Environmental Health News, Allegheny Front, The Guardian, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scranton Times-Tribune, NRDC, Midwest Energy News, Union of Concerned Scientists, Rai News, EcoWatch, the Michigan Voice, Multinationals Observatory, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Additionally, his photos have appeared in the following books:
1. “Climate Crisis Energy Violence: Mapping Energy’s Enduring Grasp on a Vulnerable Future”, Stephen Metts and Mary Finley-Brook, Elsevier Science, Spring, 2022
2. “To Frack or Not to Frack? How a Small New York Town’s Decision-Making Process Came up Short”, Ronald Fraser, Cheshire & Company Viewpoints Publishing, Inc., Fall, 2018
3. “When the Hills Are Gone: Frac Sand Mining and the Struggle for Community”by Thomas W. Pearson, University of Minnesota Press, Fall, 2017
4. “The Ground Beneath us: Form the Oldest cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are “by Paul Bogard, Little, Brown and Company, March 21st, 2017

Ted came to FracTracker after a successful stint as a Cleveland Botanical Garden postdoc fellow quantifying the Great Lakes Basin’s (GLB) vacant lot portfolio, constructing various Vacant Land Repurposing (VLR) scenario models, and working with institutions, urban planners, and community groups to understand the cost and benefits associated with VLR from an economic, social continuity, and environmental perspective. Prior to that, he completed a postdoc at Green Mountain College.
Ted’s dissertation while finishing his PhD at the University of Vermont was titled “Modeling the interaction between climate, chemistry, and ecosystem fluxes at the global scale.” Prior to this work, Dr. Auch pursued an MS at Virginia Tech looking at the ecological effects of strip-mining and Mountain Top Removal (MTR) in West Virginia, southwest Virginia, and eastern Kentucky with a focus on soil ecology and plant diversity.
Outside of work, Ted is cultivating his interests in photography and guitar playing having just gone down the slide guitar rabbit hole. He is avid fan of all things jazz, Yankees, Phish, and FC Barcelona. He frequently attends multiple Tedeschi Trucks Band shows in a row. Ted and his wife Julia are proud parents of an amazing, 8+-year-old, cello and hockey prodigy Michael Leaf and 4-year-old dancer and comedian Satchel Edward.

Phone: (802) 343-6771
Email: auch@fractracker.org

Read Ted's Staff Spotlight

Entries by Ted Auch, PhD

The Mountaineer State: Where Politics, a Fossil Fuel Legacy, and Fracking Converge

August 27, 2019/by Ted Auch, PhD

Introduction The Mountaineer State is one of the most stunningly beautiful states in all the United States, despite its complicated and unique relationship with fossil fuels dating back to the West Virginia Coal Wars of 1912 to 1921. This relationship has compromised the state’s distinctive ecosystems and its social cohesion. Instead of remediating or preventing […]

The Underlying Politics and Unconventional Well Fundamentals of an Appalachian Storage Hub

July 23, 2019/by Ted Auch, PhD

FracTracker is closely mapping and following the petrochemical build-out in Appalachia, as the oil and gas industry invests in petrochemical manufacturing. Much of the national attention on the build-out revolves around the Appalachian Storage Hub (ASH), a venture spearheaded by Appalachian Development Group. The ASH involves a network of infrastructure to store and transport natural […]

Wicked Witch of the Waste

March 7, 2019/by Ted Auch, PhD

The Great Plains has become the unconventional oil & gas industry’s dumping ground, prompting questions about the security and resilience of the bread basket and the underlying Ogalalla Aquifer Back in December of 2016, FracTracker analyzed the growing link between injection wells that dispose fracking waste and “induced seismicity” [1], or human-caused earthquakes. Our compiled […]

A Disturbing Tale of Diminishing Returns in Ohio

January 9, 2019/by Ted Auch, PhD

Utica oil and gas production, Class II injection well volumes, and lateral length trends from 2010-2018 The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently announced that Ohio’s recoverable shale gas reserves have magically increased by 11,076 billion cubic feet (BCF). This increase ranks the Buckeye State in the top 5 for changes in recoverable shale natural gas […]

Wisconsin’s Nonmetallic Mining Parcel Registration Program

November 15, 2018/by Ted Auch, PhD

How the frac sand industry is circumventing local control, plus where the industry is migrating What is nonmetallic mineral mining? It was more than a year and half ago that anti-frac sand organizer – and movement matriarch – Pat Popple published a white paper by attorney Elizabeth Feil in her Frac Sand Sentinel newsletter. The paper […]

Documenting Fracking Impacts: A Yearlong Tour from a Bird’s-Eye-View

August 8, 2018/by Ted Auch, PhD

“The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.” by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry author of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) I always tell people that you can’t really understand or appreciate the enormity, heterogeneity, and complexity of the unconventional oil and gas industry’s impact unless you look […]

Fracking’s Freshwater Supply and Demand in Eastern Ohio

February 28, 2018/by Ted Auch, PhD

Mapping Hydraulic Fracturing Freshwater Supply and Demand in Ohio Below is a map of annual and cumulative water withdrawal volumes by the hydraulic fracturing industry across Ohio between 2010 and 2016. It displays 312 unique sites, as well as water usage per lateral. The digital map, which can be expanded fullscreen for more features, includes […]

Appalachian Ohio: Where Coal Mining, Fracking, and National Politics Converge

February 7, 2018/by Ted Auch, PhD

The head of Murray Energy Corporation, Robert Murray, is very close to the highest office in the land. Such an association demands a close look at the landscape from which this corporation and its founder arouse. Belmont County, Ohio’s most famous tycoon Robert Murray has established a close relationship with the Trump administration. This connection […]

Tracking Global Oil Refineries and their Emissions

December 29, 2017/by Ted Auch, PhD

Potential Conflict Hotspots and Global Productivity Choke Points Today, FracTracker is releasing a complete inventory of all 536 global oil refineries, along with estimates of daily capacity, CO2 emissions per year, and various products. These data have also been visualized in the map below. Total productivity from these refineries amounts to 79,372,612 barrels per day […]

Health vs. Power – Risking America’s Food for Energy

June 7, 2017/by Ted Auch, PhD

Over 50% of land in the United States is dedicated to agriculture. Oil and gas development, particularly hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” is taking place near many of these farms. Farms feed us, and unfortunately they are not protected from the impacts of fracking. Even if drilling can be done responsibly, accidents happen. In Colorado, for […]