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Sustained increases in the scale and intensity of energy development activities have dominated land use trends on the Colorado Plateau, USA over the last several decades. These land-use types are characterized by soil surface disturbance, including total or partial removal of vegetative cover and physical alteration of the soil surface, resulting in decreased ecosystem productivity, increased soil erosion, habitat fragmentation, and other deleterious consequences. To better understand the magnitude and scale of these influences on Colorado Plateau ecosystems, we employed spatial toolsets and temporal remote sensing datasets (Landsat and MODIS). Estimates of spatial extent associated with oil and gas pad drilling and the rates of recovery after abandonment were evaluated. To account for how soil, geomorphic, and climatological factors may govern recovery, we used a multivariate environmental similarity surface and hierarchical approaches to group pads for analysis and find similar non-disturbed areas for comparison to gauge recovery progress. We found that pad development in more arid areas is of particular concern due to slow recovery times and high potential dust emissions. Oil and gas pad proliferation in recent years has been shown to represent significant carbon pool shifts, and is not yet fully understood in terms of ecosystem function over time. Development of wells in areas already disturbed by long term grazing, drought, and increased aridity due to climate change may have feedbacks beyond actual direct pad disturbance including wildlife habitat alterations, dust transport, decreased soil water storage, and soil erosion. Increased dust emissions are of particular concern regionally due to visibility impacts on recreation and tourism and dust deposition on adjacent mountain snow pack. Indeed, Colorado Plateau dust deposited on Rocky Mountain snowpack has been shown to decrease total annual run-off in the Colorado River Basin by as much as 5%.