iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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SkyTruth 🛰️ @skytruth.org · 07/07/2026

🗺️ In 2013, we launched FrackFinder, a crowdsourced project enlisting volunteers to map fracking well pads across Appalachia. Within 29 days, 233 volunteers completed nearly 90,000 image classifications, revealing how rapidly the region had been industrialized by fracking. The results were striking.

$Visual tile with a photo of an Appalachian landscape in the background, including fracking equipment just visible on the right. Overlaid is the SkyTruth logo at top and a semi-opaque text box beneath, reading in white text: "Case study, Putting Fracking on the Map, Location: Central Appalachia."$

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SkyTruth 🛰️ @skytruth.org · 07/07/2026

In 2005, just 60 well pads existed in the study area. By 2010, that number had grown to over 1,400, a nearly 24-fold increase in five years. We also scraped nearly 30,000 chemical disclosure reports from FracFocus, making previously inaccessible data freely available for public scrutiny & research.

$A Google Earth map from the linked blog post, showing crowd-sourced mapping of hydraulic fracturing well pads across Appalachia$

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SkyTruth 🛰️ @skytruth.org · 07/07/2026

The impact reached all the way to the statehouse. In 2017, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan cited those studies when signing a statewide fracking ban — the first enacted by a Republican governor in the U.S. 🔗 Curious to learn more? Read the full case study on our site: skytruth.org/case-studies...

skytruth.org

Putting Fracking on the Map

SkyTruth built crowdsourced mapping tools and real-time alert systems to confront hydraulic fracturing that generated landmark public health research, and influenced Maryland's statewide fracking ban.

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