Educational Resources
Introduction:
In the Corpus Christi Bay area, over three million dollars have been spent/allocated on beach and habitat restoration since 2001. CHRGIS and the related educational site provide a research-based management system to support the community and the State’s investment in these valuable resources. This educational website will promote the public’s understanding of the complexity of habitat, specifically with respect to beach restoration management.
- LEARN ABOUT COASTAL PHYSICAL PROCESSES
- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- TEKS MODULES
- PROJECT-BASED LEARNING MODULE
Purpose of CHRGIS:
- Provide a GIS database to archive restored shore and habitat data sets and provide visualization tools to assist resource managers in management of these sites.
- Provide an online educational site that offers an interactive way to visualize changes in restored shore and habitats in an effort to promote a greater understanding of coastal issues such as erosion and loss of habitat.
Four shore, beach, or habitat restoration projects have been either initiated, expanded, or completed along the developed shores of Corpus Christi Bay since 2000.
An interactive online GIS is applied to University Beach, a recently restored beach located along southern Corpus Christi Bay and adjacent to Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi to allow users to “visualize” changes in shoreline position, beach profile and sediment grain size. This system will provide an accessible archive and dissemination site for monitoring data associated with University Beach that can be expanded to include other restored shore and habitat project data in the future.
Each of these locations was unique in location and orientation along Corpus Christi Bay. Selection of either soft or hard stabilization methods (coastal structures) or a combination of the two was dependent upon specific needs identified for the site. At University Beach (selected as the prototype for site development) a unique blend of groins, detached breakwaters and beach fill placement was applied to stabilize a beach that had been lost along the Ward Island shore since the late 1940’s. Both Corpus Christi Beach and McGee Beach have benefited from beach nourishment. A project is underway at Shamrock Island to further reduce erosion of this valuable avian and aquatic habitat by constructing additional breakwaters to supplement geotube breakwaters and fill placed during previous protective actions.
Our goals are
- Educate the public about coastal erosion by highlighting several locations along Corpus Christi Bay and introduce the concepts of shore and habitat protection and restoration, and how coastal monitoring assists management of these valuable resources.
- Assist in Management of restored shore and habitat through a GIS database. This database can be expanded and applied to other locations along the Texas coast in the future.
- Compare and Visualize restored shore and habitat data through an online interactive GIS site (CHRGIS).