Seagrass Conservation in Texas Coastal Waters:

1
Seagrass Conservation in Texas Coastal Waters

• Monitoring Design Criteria and Biological
  Indicators for R-EMAP Region 6
• Kelly Fellows
• 11/26/02

2
Regional Environmental and Monitoring Assessment
Program (R-EMAP)
EMAP is a research program to develop the tools
necessary to monitor and assess the status and
trends of national ecological resources.

• R-MAP tests the applicability of the EMAP
  approach
• Uses smaller geographic scales and shorter time
  frames.

3
Environmental Issues in Texas Coastal Waters
4
Study Sites
Red Fish Bay
Lower Laguna Madre
5
Sampling Design

• Hexagons were created using the Theissen
  function
• 60 hexagons total at each site
• 1 random site generated within each hexagon

6
What was measured?

• Physiochemical Parameters
• Total Suspended Solids/Light Attenuation
• Nutrients
• Chlorophyll
• Drift Algae
• Seagrass Biomass

7
a lot of samples!

• 900 bags of biomass cores
• 600 bags of algae
• 540 water samples for
• Total Suspended Solids
• Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen
• Chlorophyll
• physiochemical measurements

8
Results Depth and Salinity
Depth (cm)
Salinity (ppt)
9
Results TSS vs Light Attenuation
TSS (mg/L)
Light Attenuation (m-1)
10
Results Chlorophyll
11
Future Work

• Create more maps showing kriging of variables.
• Compare some of the Red Fish Bay data with Lower
  Laguna Madre.

12
Acknowledgements

• Andrea Kopecky and Dr. Kenneth Dunton, University
  of Texas Marine Science Institute
• Jon Goodall and Dr. David Maidment