Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mining Investment, Mineral Rights, and Land Tenure

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

This research considers the links between mining investment, legal rights to the subsoil, and legal rights to surface lands. Recent scholarship indicates that the geography of subsoil ownership in the Americas is undergoing significant changes regarding the pace and type of extractive investments. This study explores those changes by undertaking a targeted comparative analysis of two regions that figure prominently in these changes. This research will contribute to the development of methods not only for researchers but also for the public to understand legal changes to ownership in contexts where it is rapidly changing, new land governance structures are in the process of development, and ownership histories are complex and not readily discernible from available records. Long-term case studies will be undertaken in two sites for new forms of extractive investments: the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in north central West Virginia and the Intag region of northwest Ecuador, believed to contain mineral ores. The research focuses on subsoil rights acquisitions, and uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to determine (i.) how the geography of subsoil ownership patterns is changing, and (ii.) how these changes are facilitated or impeded by institutional and governance practices.