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Contact Information |
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| Site Contacts | Address |
Co-Principal Investigators: |
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Barbara S Minsker Email: minsker@uiuc.edu Phone: (217) 333-9017 |
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Suite A 1901 South First Street Champaign, IL 61820-7406 |
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David R Maidment Email: maidment@mail.utexas.edu Phone: (512) 471-0065 Ben R Hodges Email: hodges@mail.utexas.edu Phone: (512) 471-6424 Paul A Montagna Email: paul.montagna@tamucc.edu Phone: (361) 825-2040 |
University of Texas at Austin P.O Box 7726 Austin, TX. 78713-7726 Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi 6300 Ocean Drive, Unit 5869 Corpus Christi, TX 78412 |
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James S Bonner Email: bonner@tamu.edu Phone: (979) 845-9770 Temitope Ojo Email: tojo@serf.tamus.edu Phone: (979) 458-3878 Data Manager(s): |
Adirondack Area Network, Inc. 10 Empire State Blvd. Castleton, NY. 12033-9751 |
Site History |
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The Corpus Christi Bay system is an urban estuary with complex hydrodynamic and water quality conditions (Figure 1). The bay is home to the Port of Corpus Christi, the nation's seventh largest port, to a very large complex of petrochemical facilities, and to the City of Corpus Christi, which has a population of 280,000. The average depth of the bay is 9 feet, and it is separated from the Gulf of Mexico by a barrier island, so water circulation in the bay is driven more by wind than by tides. Freshwater inflows enter the bay as pulses during storm events, mainly from the Nueces River, which parallels the southern edge of Nueces Bay. Hypoxia is a common estuarine phenomenon defined to occur when dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations fall below 2 mg/L. Hypoxia in Corpus Christi Bay, Texas was first documented in 1988 and later observed every summer. Hypoxia is a serious disturbance because few animals can tolerate the physiological stress of extended exposure to low oxygen concentrations. Hypoxia in Corpus Christi Bay results in about a ten-fold reduction in benthic standing stock and diversity. In Corpus Christi Bay, hypoxia is correlated with salinity-induced stratification of the bay, which occurs in summer when temperature and evaporation are high and precipitation is low. Stratification of Corpus Christi Bay is induced by underflows of hypersaline water (up to 50 ppt) from neighboring bays: the Laguna Madre and Oso Bay. Hypersalinity occurs in the Laguna Madre because the inflow of freshwater is less than the bay evaporation, and because the Laguna Madre is also separated from the Gulf of Mexico by a barrier island. Hypersaline conditions also occur in Oso Bay, because the Barney Davis Power Plant draws a 400 MGD flow of cooling water from the upper Laguna Madre through an intake shown in the lower part of Figure 1, and discharges this flow into Oso Bay. Several wastewater treatment plants discharge directly into Oso Bay or its tributary streams. |
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Research Abstract |
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This project is creating a prototype Environmental Information System (EIS) that couples sensor measurements with end-to-end cyberinfrastructure to improve understanding of hypoxia in Corpus Christi Bay (CCBay), Texas by: (1) creating an Environmental Data Access System for CC Bay data archives, leveraging CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Web service developments to create data services that automatically ingest observed data in remote archives; (2) leveraging NCSAs cyberinfrastructure technologies to create an Environmental Modeling System for CCBay hypoxia, combining multiple numerical models with machine learning algorithms; and (3) demonstrating the effectiveness of the EIS for supporting adaptive hypoxia sampling and collaborative research. |
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| Institutional Affiliations | Research Web pages |