[en] Hydraulic fracturing operations have been viewed as the cause of certain environmental issues including groundwater contamination. The potential for hydraulic fracturing to induce contaminant pathways in groundwater is not well understood since gas wells are completed while isolating the water table and the gas-bearing reservoirs lay thousands of feet below the water table. Recent studies have attributed ground water contamination to poor well construction and leaks in the wellbore annulus due to ruptured wellbore casings. In this paper, a geospatial model of the Barnett Shale region was created using ArcGIS. The model was used for spatial analysis of groundwater quality data in order to determine if regional variations in groundwater quality, as indicated by various groundwater constituent concentrations, may be associated with the presence of hydraulically fractured gas wells in the region. The Barnett Shale reservoir pressure, completions data, and fracture treatment data were evaluated as predictors of groundwater quality change. Results indicated that elevated concentrations of certain groundwater constituents are likely related to natural gas production in the study area and that beryllium, in this formation, could be used as an indicator variable for evaluating fracturing impacts on regional groundwater quality. Results also indicated that gas well density and formation pressures correlate to change in regional water quality whereas proximity to gas wells, by itself, does not. The results also provided indirect evidence supporting the possibility that micro annular fissures serve as a pathway transporting fluids and chemicals from the fractured wellbore to the overlying groundwater aquifers. - Graphical abstract: A relative increase in beryllium concentrations in groundwater for the Barnett Shale region from 2001 to 2011 was visually correlated with the locations of gas wells in the region that have been hydraulically fractured over the same time period. - Highlights: • Migration pathways from fractured wells to groundwater are poorly understood • Geospatial modeling correlated groundwater chemicals to Barnett fractured wells • Increased Beryllium strongly associated with hydraulically fractured gas wells • Indirect evidence of pollutant migration via microannular fissures in well casing • Large-scale and spatial approach needed to detect groundwater quality changes