GETTING oil and gas companies to contain the harm they do to the environment just got a little easier.

Companies are sometimes asked to preserve pristine land to compensate for the damage their operations do – both directly and through the roads, houses and towns that spring up nearby. This poses a problem because the companies can easily claim credit for protecting land their activities would never have damaged anyway.

Now Joe Kiesecker of The Nature Conservancy in Fort Collins, Colorado, and colleagues are applying a new approach. Using computer models based on data from the US Department of the Interior, …