3,473 research outputs found
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Digital Compilation of Submerged Lands Sediment Textures, Sediment Geochemistry, and Washover Areas of the Texas Coast
This report summarizes the methods used by the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) to produce electronic files of sample locations, sediment textures, and geochemical analyses for about 6,700 sediment samples collected from the Submerged Lands of Texas, including all coastal bays, estuaries, lagoons, and the inner continental shelf extending 10.3 mi into the Gulf of Mexico. Active washover areas and other potential sites of oil invasion along the Texas Gulf shore were also mapped and digitized for inclusion in the Texas Natural Resources Inventory (NRI) ARC/INFO geographic information system (GIS). The major categories of the NRI program addressed by this project include 1.2a2 (sediment metals), 1.2a9 (sediment grain size), 1.2a10 (sediment total organic carbon), 1.7e (sediment percent sand), and 2.6e(c) (morphology of washover areas).
The primary results of the project were electronic files containing the locations and attributes of surficial sediments and washover areas of the following seven coastal regions: Beaumont-Port Arthur (Sabine Lake), Houston Galveston (Galveston Bay), Bay City-Freeport, Port Lavaca (Matagorda Bay), Corpus Christi (Corpus Christi Bay), Kingsville (upper Laguna Madre), and Brownsville-Harlingen (lower Laguna Madre). These seven regions cover the entire Texas coast and include all of the NRI highest priority areas.Bureau of Economic Geolog
Collaborative Creation of the OER Metadata Rosetta Stone
The OER Discovery Working Group is a newly formed collaborative effort among OER advocates, facilitated by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), involving metadata and cataloging librarians, and relevant specialists in the U.S. and Canada. This group’s focus is to support the community in developing best practices and outline potential next steps for how metadata standards could contribute to platform-neutral discovery of OER.
Members of the OER Discovery Work Group consist of stakeholders from eCampus Ontario, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education’s (ISKME) OER Commons, State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo’s Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS), and Mt Hood Community College Library’s (MHCC) OER MARC template. They created a document that translates core functionality across 3 commonly used metadata vocabularies - MARC21, Dublin Core, and Schema.org/LRMI - to meet the specific needs for OER.
This presentation will share the OER Metadata Rosetta Stone (CC-BY), highlight the collaborative process, and welcome discussion with attendees to inform future applications and collaborative developments for the community as a whole
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Colorado River Diversion Project Reconnaissance Work to Establish Monitoring Stations in Matagorda Bay Near the Mouth of the Colorado River
Fifteen monitoring stations were established in the eastern arm of Matagorda Bay, west of the Colorado River Delta, in the area where the river is to be diverted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (see fig. 1). All stations shown on figure 1 were located by triangulation, and their positions were recorded with respect to features existing on nautical chart 11319 or with respect to features located and plotted on the chart during the field survey. Twenty-foot sections of 2.5-inch PVC pipe were driven into the sediments at eight stations (see table 1) to mark selected deep-water and bay-center sites. The PVC pipes extend about 3 ft above the water. Six cedar posts, 2 inches in diameter by 6 ft long, were placed on land at strategic locations along the bayward side of Matagorda Peninsula. The locations of the posts were confirmed with reference to aerial photographs and were plotted on the nautical chart. The posts were used as reference markers to locate bay-margin sampling sites. The tops of the PVC pipes and fence posts were painted and flagged with orange fluorescent paint and tape. Because the sampling stations were also located by triangulation using more permanent navigation aids such as water tanks, radio antennas, houses, and bay markers, they can be relocated should the PVC pipes or cedar posts be removed.Bureau of Economic Geolog
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Sedimentation in Fluvial Deltaic Wetlands and Estuarine Areas, Texas Gulf Coast
Deltaic and associated riverine deposits near the mouths of rivers that discharge into estuaries along the Texas coast are the sites of extensive salt, brackish, and fresh-water marshes that are essential components of biologically productive estuarine systems. These bay-head depositional features are constructed primarily by fluvial sediments, sediments transported and deposited by the major rivers that enter estuarine waters. The loss of over 10,000 acres of wetlands in alluvial and deltaic areas of the Neches (White and others, 1987) and San Jacinto Rivers (White and others, 1985) emphasized the need to examine in more detail the processes that establish and maintain, as well as degrade, these important natural resources along the Texas coast.Bureau of Economic Geolog
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Sedimentation in Fluvial Deltaic Wetlands and Estuarine Areas, Texas Gulf Coast - Summary
Deltaic and associated riverine deposits near the mouths of rivers that discharge into estuaries along the Texas coast are the sites of extensive salt-, brackish-, and freshwater marshes that are essential components of biologically productive estuarine systems. These bay-head depositional features are constructed primarily by fluvial sediments, sediments transported and deposited by the major rivers that enter estuarine waters. The loss of over 10,000 acres of wetlands in alluvial and deltaic areas of the Neches (White and others, 1987) and San Jacinto Rivers (White and others, 1985) emphasized the need to examine in more detail the processes that establish and maintain, as well as degrade, these important natural resources along the Texas coast.Bureau of Economic Geolog
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Fluvial-Estuarine Sedimentation Texas Gulf Coast
Deltaic and associated alluvial areas located at the mouths of rivers that flow into the bay-estuary-lagoon system along the Texas coast serve as habitats for extensive salt, brackish, and fresh-water marshes, which are crucial components of biologically productive estuarine ecosystems. These bay-head depositional systems are predominantly formed by fluvial sediments transported and deposited by the major rivers that discharge into the estuarine waters. The loss of over 10,000 acres of wetlands in the alluvial and deltaic areas of the Neches and San Jacinto Rivers underscores the necessity to closely examine the processes that establish, sustain, and degrade these vital natural resources along the Texas coast.Bureau of Economic Geolog
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Evaluation and Validation of EO-1 and Landsat-7 Imagery through an Analysis of Land Cover/Land Use of Rates of Deforestation in Belize, Central America
Objectives:
• Evaluate ALI sensor relative to Landsat TM data in terms of accurate classification of specific types of land cover and land use in central and southern Belize.
• Analyze the capability of ALI sensor to determine extent and rate of deforestation through GIS-assisted spatial and temporal analyses of classified imagery.
• Classify spectral data using both existing statistical methods and new contextual and multisensor algorithms currently developed at The University of Texas at Austin for multispectral and hyperspectral data.Bureau of Economic Geolog
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Sedimentation and Historical Changes in Fluvial Deltaic Wetlands Along the Texas Gulf Coast with Emphasis on the Colorado and Trinity River Deltas
The most extensive losses in coastal wetlands in the United States over the last two decades have occurred along the Gulf Coast. Wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate on the Mississippi River Deltaic Plain, indicating a reversal in the trend of net progradation of the delta that characterized much of the past 5,000 years (Gagliano and others, 1981). The land-loss rates have accelerated geometrically during the 20th century, apparently as a result of natural and artificial processes, the latter including artificial levees and control structures that have harnessed the Mississippi River and virtually eliminated the deltaic sedimentation processes of overbank flooding, crevassing, and upstream diversion; extensive canalization and accelerated subsidence related to mineral extraction compound the problem (Gagliano and others, 1981). Investigations of marsh losses in Louisiana indicate that marsh aggradation (vertical accretion) rates are not keeping pace with relative (apparent) sea-level rise (Delaune and others, 1983; Hatton and others, 1983; Baumann and others, 1984; Boesch and others, 1984).
Although less extensive than in Louisiana, losses in wetlands along the Texas coast have also been documented (McGowen and Brewton, 1975; Gosselink and others, 1979; Johnston and Ader, 1983; White and others, 1984; 1985; 1987). Some of the most dramatic changes have occurred in fluvial-deltaic areas such as near the mouths of the San Jacinto and Neches Rivers where wetland losses totaled more than 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s (White and others, 1985; 1987). The losses are characterized by submergence and displacement of marshes, swamps, and fluvial woodlands by shallow subaqueous flats and open water, indicating, as in Louisiana, that marsh aggradation rates are not keeping pace with relative sea-level rise.Bureau of Economic Geolog
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Sedimentation in Fluvial Deltaic Wetlands and Estuarine Areas, Texas Gulf Coast -- Literature Synthesis
Deltaic and associated alluvial areas at the mouths of rivers that discharge into the bay-estuary-lagoon system along the Texas coast are the sites of extensive salt-, brackish-, and freshwater marshes that are essential components of these biologically productive estuarine systems. These bayhead depositional systems are constructed primarily by fluvial sediments, sediments transported and deposited by the major rivers that enter estuarine waters. The loss of over 10,000 acres of wetlands in alluvial and deltaic areas of the Neches (White and others, 1987) and San Jacinto Rivers (White and others, 1985) has emphasized the need to examine in more detail the processes that establish and maintain, as well as degrade, these important natural resources along the Texas coast.Bureau of Economic Geolog
The Impact of a water-imposed interruption of growth in the Las Vegas region
This study is prompted by the expectation that water supplies for the Las Vegas Valley, both those used currently and those additional quantities available from existing sources, cannot sustain significant further economic growth of the region beyond the year 2006.
There are five parts to this study. Part I uses a regional econometric (REMI) model to project the growth of the Las Vegas region to natural maturity, essentially unconstrained by an overriding water shortage.
Part II is a reinforcing cross-section analysis of metropolitan areas in the United States to learn the most common natural growth patterns and those that have produced a good quality of life with a minimum of major local disturbances. This analysis gives attention to employment, population, income, and other key economic and social indicators. We give special attention to events in cities that are nearer to or at levels of maturity still many years away for Las Vegas.
Part III of this study looks at the performance of sectors of the Las Vegas economy between 1970 and 1989. In particular, we identify those sectors of the Las Vegas economy that are sensitive to variations in growth, particularly during the 1979 to 1983 recession period.
Part IV examines the impact of an unrelieved water shortage after 2006 on the Las Vegas socioeconomic future, giving special attention to the fraction of employment that depends on historically high growth rates to predict the impact of rapid decline of that employment. In Part IV, we employ the depth and power of the REMI model to portray the consequences for Las Vegas of a sharp drop in growth after 2006. In this part, we simulate a sixty percent reduction in construction employment, based on the experience of other cities investigated in Part II. We trace this disruption of growth through reduced employment, population, output, and income. We measure the effect of the water shortage by comparing the values of economic variables with a water shortage with a control forecast produced under the assumption of adequate water supplies. Part IV also includes a partial analysis of a Las Vegas water shortage on rural Nevada and on the state of Nevada as a whole.
Part V investigates the impact on rural areas of construction and operation of a system bringing water from outlying areas to the Las Vegas region. We are aware that final planning for such a system is not yet completed. We have used a reasonable set of expenditures, locations, and periods that can be expected to occur. These simulations provide a plausible estimate of the effects of both the construction and operation of a water-delivery system on employment and income in those rural areas. As more definite information emerges, appropriate changes can readily be made and new analysis of impacts can be quickly provided
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