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

OH National Response Center Data on Shale Gas Viewer

September 12, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – Ohio Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we as US citizens have real-time access to “all oil, chemical, radiological, biological, and etiological discharges into the environment anywhere in the United States and its territories” data via the National Response Center (NRC). The NRC is […]

OH Class II Injection Wells – 2012 Year-in-Review

August 15, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – OH Program Coordinator Ohio is currently home to 242 of what Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) calls “Active” Class II Injection wells capable of accepting hydraulic fracturing waste1. This is not an accurate reflection of the state’s entire Class II Injection well inventory, which includes 129 Enhanced Oil Recovery […]

Ohio’s Shale Gas Waste Disposal Network Map Now Online

June 20, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, Ohio Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance A complete inventory of Ohio’s Active Class II Injection Wells, as well as Ohio Department of Natural Resources certified Underground Injection Control (UIC) certified transporters, is now available in map form on FracTracker.org (See embedded map below). There is an interest in mapping Ohio’s waste facility network […]

Land-Use Change, the Utica Shale, and the Loss of Ecosystem Services

May 16, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – Ohio Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance In Ohio, Utica Well pads range in size from 5-15 acres. (Estimates for pipeline and retention ponds are unavailable.) That figure gives us the chance to estimate how hydraulic fracturing influenced changes to land-use, ecosystem services, plant productivity, and soil carbon loss. Working with Caleb […]

Unconventional Shale Drilling: What we know, What we don’t know, What we need to know to move forward

April 23, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – Ohio Outreach Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance A Conference Retrospective Communities, NGOs large and small, local governments, and even next door neighbors and/or families are dealing with long-term potential and realized environmental, economic, health*, and social equity damage from the activities of the gas industry in Ohio and beyond. These impacts were […]

A Year in the Life of Ohio’s Utica Play

April 23, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

The Ohio Utica play has taken off in the last calendar year, jumping from 160 permitted wells as of March 2012 to 453 since then. This equates to 1.24 permitted wells per day. (Note: The state’s less exploited Marcellus shale had 13 permitted wells a year ago with an increase of 7 since then.) A […]

To Severance Tax or not to Severance Tax, that is the question!

February 25, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – OH Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance The economic opportunities provided by Ohio’s Utica Shale play via hydraulic fracturing have been cited repeatedly by the Ohio Oil and Gas Association and industry think-tanks like IHS Inc [1]. Numbers published by the latter last October [2] predicted 143,000 Ohio jobs and $18 billion […]

The Ohio Utica Shale Play Turns 500… Almost!

January 29, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

Drilling Trends Ohio’s first Utica well was permitted by ODNR on behalf of Hess Ohio Resources on 9-28-10. As shown in Figure 1 (right), the major uptick in well permitting began in the summer of 2011 with 23 wells permitted during that period, ramping up to 24 wells in November 2011. There was a brief […]

Ohio’s Waste Not, Want Not!

January 23, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – Ohio Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance The Akron Beacon Journal’s Bob Downing has just published an investigative report looking at the recent advisory put forth by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s (OEPA) Division of Materials and Waste Management – along with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Oil […]

Lakes in Appalachian Ohio’s Utica Play: A Snapshot

January 16, 2013/by Ted Auch, PhD

By Ted Auch, PhD – Ohio Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance Ohio’s southwest Appalachian counties – namely Carroll, Harrison, Guernsey, and Noble Counties – are home to two significant resources: the state’s Utica Shale Triple Play – defined as the extraction of “natural gas and natural gas liquids…from the Marcellus Shale…Upper Devonian Shale…and the Utica Shale […]