Spring Beach Surveying with Cunningham Middle School Students  

by Melanie Gingras    

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Map showing monitoring sites for CMS students (Source: Melinda Martinez).

On May 17, 2016, CMGL MS students Melanie Gingras and Rachel Edwards returned to Bob Hall Pier in Corpus Christi to assist with the Texas High School Coastal Monitoring Program. CMGL has partnered with Tiffany Caudle of the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), a research unit of the University of Texas at Austin, since 2007. The purpose of this program is to engage young students, like the students from Cunningham Middle School, in coastal and marine sciences as well as to teach the students fundamental techniques for collecting beach profiles, wind, wave, current, and GPS data. This program is sponsored by the Texas General Land Office (GLO) and the data collected by the students at the two study sites is used to enhance the work done by the Texas Coastal Management Project.

The two study sites depicted here (above) are the sites monitored by Cunningham Middle School students. The beach-dune complex site has been monitored since 2009 and shows students the morphology of a natural beach, whereas the seawall site, which was added in 2015, depicts the morphology of a beach that is highly influenced by man-made structures.  

As students from Cunningham Middle School assemble, Tiffany Caudle review
the concepts and activities to be implemented during the study
(Photo credit: Melanie Gingras).

When the students arrived at Bob Hall Pier, they were debriefed by Tiffany Caudle regarding the purpose and importance of the project (right, Tiffany is speaking with her arm raised). At the first study site, the students were split into two groups. One group of students walked with a handheld GPS along the vegetation line and wet/dry line and measured winds, waves, and currents, while the other group performed a shore-normal beach profile. At the second site, the groups switched so that the group that performed the dune profile at the first site gathered the wind, wave, current, and GPS data at the second site while the group that gathered wind, wave, current, and GPS data at the first site performed the dune profile at the second site.

A group of students works with Tiffany to gather dune
elevation data (Photo credit: Melanie Gingras).

The group that performed the shore-normal beach profile (left), staked the transect using the permanent datum as a reference and used Emery rods, metric tape, and a hand level to survey the changes in elevation from the foredunes to the waterline.

The group that gathered wind, wave, and current data (below) did so with a Suunto compass, a pressure anemometer, a stopwatch, oranges, and measuring tape before breaking into smaller groups to walk the vegetation and wet/dry line with a differential GPS unit.

For more information about the Texas High School Coastal Monitoring program, click here.

A student from CMS launces an orange into the ocean while Rachel Edwards keeps time for the current measurement (left). A CMS student and Melanie Gingras measure the longshore distance traveled by an orange (right). (Photo credits: Melanie Gingraas and Rachel Edwards).

CMGL Staff Lead Field Trip and Student Wins Award at Local Meetings in April     By Luz Lumb Dr. Davis (far left) and Dr. Gibeaut (center, pointing at map) led a tour of Mustang Island geoenvironments at the Texas meting of the American Shore and Beach Conservation Association, hosted by UTMSI. April was a busy month for meetings for our colleagues at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute (UTMSI). On April 1, UTMSI hosted the annual meeting of the Texas Chapter of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA), which is held at a different location every year. Then on April 13-14, they hosted the Texas Bays and Estuaries Meeting, an annual event at UTMSI. Both meetings were well organized and very productive, and CMGL students and staff were happy to attend. Drs. Davis and Gibeaut talk about Fish Pass, a tidal inlet that was dredged and jettied back in the 70's, only to be filled in by natural processes less than 10 years later. Dr. Richard (Skip) Davis, Harte Research Institute visiting professor, author, and leader in the field of barrier island morphology, was part of the organizing committee for the ASBPA meeting. Skip and our own Dr. Gibeaut, with help from CMGL staff Luz Lumb, Anthony Reisinger, and Mukesh Subedee, led a field trip covering the length of Mustang Island and the major geoenvironments that are common to most Texas barrier islands. The group of about 20 academics and professionals in diverse fields related to Texas beaches and dunes (such as geology, remote sensing, geochemistry, environmental engineering, and restoration) got an up-close look at natural features such as tidal inlets, storm washovers, and back-island marshes and flats, as well as constructed features such as a dredge-and-fill  canal subdivision, a wastewater treatment plant outfall that has created a brackish marsh, and Packery Channel, which separates Mustang and North Padre Islands and is kept open by long jetties and periodic dredging. The next day, Dr. Davis, Anthony, and Mukesh each presented work they are currently involved in. Dr. Davis pointed out the need for a state-wide sediment budget to be used by management agencies in large-scale management decisions. Anthony showed results from his PhD work that uses remote sensing techniques to identify effects of oyster dredging and other human activities on the transport of sediment in the major Texas bays, and Mukesh presented work he is leading in projecting environmental and socioeconoimc impacts of sea level rise along the Texas coast. View from the observation tower of the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center in Port Aransas, where a wastewater tretment plant outfall has turned extensive tidal flats into a thriving brackish water marsh.  Rachel won 2nd place in the student poster competition at the Texas Bays and Estuaries meeting. At the Texas Bays and Estuaries meeting, master's student Rachel Edwards presented a poster describing her thesis work. Rachel is working with Mukesh on characterizing the effect specific policies regarding development might have on the distribution of marsh environments under various sea level rise scenarios in the Galveston Bay area. Rachel's work is still in the initial phase, but we are excited that her results may be useful in terms of guiding policy toward a more resilient coast. Poster judges at TBEM must agree, because Rachel was awarded 2nd place (and $100) in the student poster competition! Many thanks to the Texas Bays and Estuaries Meeting and the Coastal Bend Bays Foundation for sponsoring the awards. Rachel's work is part of a larger project, led by CMGL researcher Mukesh Subedee, identifying biophysical and siocioeconomic impacts of sea level rise along the Texas coast.