The Process Of Hydraulic Fracturing - 1387 Words

Introduction: The process of hydraulic fracturing can be understood at different geographic scales such as the local, national and global. In order to better understand this process, the ways in which these scales influence hydraulic fracturing need to be deeply considered. The original purpose of hydraulic fracturing was to benefit the national and local economy plus environment of the United States, but due to the large interdependencies and networks of our world today, impacts at a global scale are inevitable. By analyzing each scale individually starting with national, local and ending with global, it will become clear that each scale is interdependent and interrelated with one another. Scales: In our fast-paced and globalizing†¦show more content†¦(Knox, 2010, p.11). Finally at the local scale, this can include human settlements such as community, home, and body (Knox, 2010, p.11). The local scale can be viewed as a mosaic, where the world is conceived as a collection of local peoples and places, each one being a piece in a broader global pattern (Crang, 2014, p. 11). Not only at a mosaic level does local and global connect, but also through a networking level where both local and global are made up of sets of connections and disconnections and can see local places as gaining their different characters through their distinctive patterns of association with other places (Crang, 2014, p. 18). For the specific case of hydraulic fracturing, it is more effective to view it through networks at the national, local, and global levels because a main factor of this resource is boosting the national economy of the United States by globally exporting the resource. The abilit y to export the good requires connections and networking between the different scales. Hydraulic Fracturing: Hydraulic Fracturing is a process of forcing high levels of pressurized water underground in order to crack the layer of the earth to release the shale from the gas reservoir. This method artificially induces underground cracking which was known in 1947 as hydrafacing (Sica, 2013, p. 25) and over the years this method has adapted with technological advances and is currently known as fracking. Figure 1, above,