Mission Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve MANERR

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Mission Aransas National Estuarine Research
Reserve (MANERR)

• Rae Mooney
• Department of Marine Science

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MANERR
delineated in black
UT Marine Science Institute
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Objectives

• Delineate Mission and Aransas Watersheds
• Analyze Land Use/Land Cover Data
• Analyze Precipitation and Streamflow Data
• Effects of Storm Events on Estuary

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Mission and Aransas Watershed

• NHDPlus (with the help of Tyler Jantzen)
• Watershed exports into Copano Bay

Mouth of Mission River
Mouth of Aransas River
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Streamflow
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Precipitation

• Annual (in/yr)
• Graph of monthly Precipitation and Streamflow
  data soon to come

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Texas Coast Weather

• Very unpredictable
• 1991-41cm
• 1992-81cm
• 50-year average
• 30 cm

• Dunton, K. H., B. Hardegree, and Terry Whitledge.
  2001. Responses of estuarine marsh vegetation
  to interannual variations in precipitation.
  Estuaries 24851-861.

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Land Use/Land Cover
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LULC

• Most Row crops
• Pasture/Hay
• Grasslands
• Orchards/Vineyards
• Forests
• Fertilizer

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Watershed Exports and Storm Events

• Calculate Runoff
• to be completed
• Compare Runoff and Precipitation data
• to be completed
• Storm Events and LULC
• Possible increase N in estuary

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Next year at UTMSI

• Surface water samples
• Analyze water chemistry
• Focus on Storm Events
• Non-point source pollution

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Questions??

• Thanks!