TEX-ECE-01

The University of Texas Marine Science Institute’s Texas Gulf Coast Research Center (TGCRC) launches a collaborative interdisciplinary project to understand how the exchange between estuarine and coastal waters controls fisheries recruitment and production, biodiversity, trophic linkages, carbon and nitrogen sources and cycling, geomorphology, and the environmental impacts of contaminants. The project focuses on Aransas Pass on the Texas Coastal Bend and includes four themes. (1) Estuarine and ocean exchange. Influence of freshwater inflows and circulation on the transport of organisms, sediments, and key environmental variables over two temporal scales: the reconstruction of how anthropogenic activities since the late 19 th century have affected the salinities, sedimentation rates, carbon burial rates, and communities of dominant organisms, and present-day exchange processes. (2) Biogeochemistry. Ecosystem metabolism, carbon and nitrogen sources, and cycling. (3) Higher trophic level responses. Influence on secondary production, fish physiological responses, faunal diversity, biological connectivity, habitats, trophic linkages, and fisheries production. (4) Contaminants –Environmental impact of anthropogenic pollutants on ecologically and economically important marine species. The data will be integrated through circulation and ecosystem-level numerical models, resulting in a comprehensive understanding of the historical and present-day coastal-estuarine exchange in arid regions with limited freshwater inflow and a small tidal range.