CMGL Students Participate in the Texas High School Monitoring Program By: Melinda Martinez                 MS students, Michael Rittenhouse and Melinda Martinez, assisted Tiffany Caudle from the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin, on Friday, January 31st to engage students from Cunningham Middle School in coastal research through the Texas High School Coastal Monitoring Program.   Figure 1. Michael Rittenhouse with middle school students measuring the wave period by counting waves at a certain point for 10 seconds. Photo credit: Melinda Martinez. Students were able to apply scientific procedures to measure beach morphology and learn about beach processes, shoreline mapping, and beach profiling on Mustang Island, TX. Students began the beach survey at a permanent stake located in the back dunes and measured elevations every 1-2m along a transect perpendicular to the beach to the shoreline. Beach profiling tools included an emery rod, metric tape, and a hand level. Beach processes measurements and observations were made for wind and wave direction, wind speed, wave height and period, types of waves, width of surf zone, and longshore current speed (Figure 1). Beach processes tools included a floating device, measuring tape, stopwatch, portable wind meter, and compass. Students were also able to map both shoreline and vegetation line using a handheld GPS to record the location of these features while walking.  Figure 2. Tiffany Caudle drawing a general overview a beach profile in the sand. Photo Credit: Melinda Martinez. The students were able to participate in actual research and enhance their coastal science education while providing useful data for the program to monitor coastal processes (Figure 2). These measurements are compared to previously taken data to provide the rate of shoreline change.

Conservation Design Project Nears Completion MS student Luz Lumb and Dr. Gibeaut traveled to the headquarters of Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve (MANERR) in Port Aransas on Wednesday, July 24th to present preliminary results and get stakeholder feedback for their contributions to the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative funded project Employing the Conservation Design Approach on Coastal Avian Habitats along the Central Texas Coast. This is a landscape-scale conservation planning project managed by the International Crane Foundation in collaboration with the MANERR, Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, The Nature Conservancy, and the Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying Science here at TAMUCC. The conservation design approach focuses on using geospatial data, biological information, and models to develop maps and other tools that can guide habitat conservation decisions in a quantitative way.  Potential high, low, and intermittent use habitat was determined for the whooping crane and a suite of other coastal avian species along the central Texas coast. A major goal in conservation design is to assess every single acre of habitat on a landscape scale in terms of its potential to support a species or assemblage of species. CMGL’s role in this project is the acquisition and development of spatial data for this project, including land cover information, bird surveys, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), and sea level rise model outputs. The final product will be explicit maps of current and future potential habitat for high, low, and intermittent use for the endangered whooping crane to guide conservation efforts to achieve 120,000 acres of protected habitat to support the endangered species down-listing goal of 1000 cranes. According to current estimates, there is only enough protected winter habitat to support about 500 whooping cranes. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that a thousand birds are needed to move the whooping crane from endangered to threatened status. The methodology developed here will employ biological data provided by the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory to assess potential habitat for a suite of important birds in the Central Texas Coast, and methods will be recommended to extend this approach to larger portions of the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GCPLCC). The Composite Habitat Type dataset was developed from three existing land cover datasets covering benthic, wetland/intertidal, and upland environments. At the workshop, Luz presented the Composite Habitat Type dataset she developed for this project, as well as a methodology for identifying changes to potential whooping crane habitat under various sea level rise scenarios as projected by the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM). Dr. Gibeaut provided technical expertise on geospatial techniques and the acquisition and development of spatial data. Dr. Liz Smith of the International Crane Foundation (and member of Luz’s thesis committee), gave an overview of the progress of the entire project (almost done!) and led discussion about potential habitat maps developed for a variety of other birds. The stakeholders present represented state and federal wildlife management agencies as well as non-governmental conservation planning organizations. Workshop participants represented a wealth of academic and field experience related to habitat use for certain bird species and on-the-ground configuration of habitat and land cover. Their feedback proved extremely valuable for the refinement of species’ needs maps and in understanding the benefits and limitations of various land cover data sets used in the development of the Composite Habitat Type dataset. Next steps for the project include incorporating participant’s input and completing the final report.

Del Angel presents at the Aquarium at Rockport Harbor Diana Del Angel, Coastal Geoscientist at the CMGL presented at the Aquarium at Rockport Harbor as part of the aquarium’s lecture series on July 18th, 2013. The presentation was titled “Beach Nourishment on the Texas Coast” and highlighted coastal processes, erosion and the need for beach nourishment. Beaches and dunes are an important cultural and ecologic part of coastal systems and are many times a large part of local economic vitality. In some developed areas, beach erosion resulting from storm events or other natural and anthropogenic causes can results in a loss of beach and dune environments and associated resources. One of several solutions to beach erosion is beach nourishment, which consists of the pumping of sand onshore to widen and elevate the beach. This talk highlighted the methods and design used for beach nourishment and provided examples of nourishment projects on Galveston Island and South Padre Island, Texas.                                           Galveston Island Seawall before (top) and after (below) beach nourishment in 2009. Images courtesy of Cameron Perry.              The Aquarium at Rockport Harbor Lecture Series is open to the public and is held the 1st and 3rd weekend of the month at 4:30 pm in the Education Center. For more information visit >> http://www.rockportaquarium.com/index.php/education-center/lecture-series.html