Effects of traffic on the establishment and spread of invasive annual grasses: an annotated bibliography produced through a structured literature search and semi-automated content analysis

This data release includes citation details, abstracts, and results of a semi-automated content analysis for 88 publications we identified on the topic of the potential effects of traffic from oil and gas development on invasive annual grasses.

Our goal was to develop a structured literature search and semi-automated content analysis process to compile and provide an initial characterization of relevant bodies of literature on priority topics for public land management. Our topic, the potential effects of traffic from oil and gas development on invasive annual grasses, including cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), Ventenata dubia, and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), addresses the combination of a commonly proposed action and a resource of concern on multiple-use public lands.

We began our structured literature search with a benchmark set of key publications which we used to refine search strings in Web of Science and Scopus. After review of the resulting products, we retained 50 publications, which we supplemented with 38 additional publications identified through the AI-based tool Research Rabbit. This search process was completed in early August, 2025. Finally, we applied a semi-automated content analysis script in R to quantify the presence of relevant terms related to habitat type, climate, disturbance type, species, location and methodology in the main text of each publication. We provide the R script used to conduct the content analysis in a companion software release (linked in Related External Resources), which can be easily modified for content analysis of publications on other topics.

We found that publications most frequently referenced 11 states, 10 of which overlap with the sagebrush biome, our region of interest. Terms related to roads and traffic were detected at least once in 86 and 75 publications, respectively. Twenty publications mention terms related to oil and gas development, and 41 mention at least one of our invasive annual grass species of interest. Summary information about the bibliography is included in a set of figures, including bar charts that show the number of publications by publication type, year, and ecosystem type; matrices that show the frequency of relevant terms used in the publications; and a map that shows the spatial distribution of publications. Together, these elements provide key information that can inform future decision-making and environmental analyses related to oil and gas development.

Science summary and synthesis products such as this one offer one practical solution to the research-management gap by compiling and distilling large bodies of literature on topics of priority interest to resource managers.