Effects of vegetation and soils surface disturbance and reclamation on invasive annual grasses: an annotated bibliography to inform environmental effects analyses related to oil and gas development

This data release includes citation details, abstracts, and results of a semi-automated content analysis for 171 publications we identified on the topic of the potential effects of vegetation and soils surface disturbance and reclamation associated with oil and gas development on invasive annual grass establishment and spread. 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 vegetation and soils surface disturbance and reclamation associated with oil and gas development on invasive annual grass establishment and spread, including cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), ventenata (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 171 publications. This search process was completed in early December, 2025. Using the R software package called KWICer, we conducted semi-automated content analysis 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 (Bailey and others, 2026). We found that publications most frequently referenced 11 states, eight of which overlap with the sagebrush biome, our region of interest within the western United States. Publications included in this data release ranged from 1996 to 2025, and the majority of these publications were journal articles. The most frequent terms used across publications included seeding, disturbance, establishment, germination, soil moisture, soil nutrients, and erosion. Summary information about the bibliography is included in a set of figures that show the number of products by product type, year, ecosystem type, and geographic area, as well as matrices that show the frequency and co-occurrence of relevant terms used in the products. Together with the annotated bibliography CSV, these elements provide key information that can inform future decision-making and environmental analyses related to soils and vegetation management associated with oil and gas development.

References:

Bailey, L.N., Varner, D.M., Whipple, S.E., 2026, KWICer: Producing an annotated bibliography from a set of PDFs by quantifying keywords, (Version 1.0.0): U.S. Geological Survey software release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P1476GUY.