Conway, Kyle2024-08-132024-08-132024-08-13http://hdl.handle.net/10393/46454https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-30477The western half of the rural state of North Dakota, located in the northern U.S. Great Plains, sits atop the Bakken oil formation, a sandwich-like structure consisting of two layers of shale with an oil-rich layer of dolomite in between. The development of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) technologies led to a boom in the region from 2008 to 2014, during which residents expressed concern about the changes the landscape was undergoing. This thesis describes those changes. Chapter 1 begins by defining landscape as a socially produced space whose territorial configuration (the arrangement of structures within the physical environment) and semiotic configuration (the meaning people make of those structures) operate in dialectical tension with each other. It emphasizes the idea of roughness, borrowed from Milton Santos, who proposes the term to describe how people’s interpretations of a site lead them to interact with and alter its structures, reshaping them in ways that, in turn, affect their subsequent interactions. Chapter 2 uses techniques of spatial data analysis, including kernel density estimation and variations of Ripley’s K function, to describe the evolution of the territorial configuration of Williams County, near the centre of the Bakken, from the region’s first boom in the 1950s to its most recent boom in 2008. It argues that settler conceptions of time and space as homogeneous, translated into policies and laws implemented by the U.S. government, created patterns that influenced choices about well placement during the 2008 boom. Chapter 3 uses techniques of text mining to describe the ways people made sense of these changes, as expressed in letters to the editor published in the Williston Herald, the region’s largest newspaper, during and after the 2008 boom. It argues that the semiotic roughness, observable in expressions of conflicting opinions, smoothed out over the course of the boom, as routine set in and people grew more optimistic. In their concern for changes over time, both chapters describe different dimensions of the region’s roughness, further synthesized in chapter 4, which concludes by asking how the region’s territorial configuration might be read differently, if settler scholars and residents reimagine their relationship to time, space, and the landscape of the Bakken.enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Bakken formationhydraulic fracturingfrackingNorth Dakotalandscapespatial data analysistext miningsettler chronotopeThesis