Pre-nourishment beach benthic invertebrate monitoring – South Padre Island

Summary

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi will conduct beach benthic macrofaunal monitoring to assess time for the benthic invertebrate community to recover following a beach nourishment event at the City of South Padre Island (the “Project”). The study will follow the same before-after-control-impact design and methodology that was established for TAMUCC’s CMP Cycle 26 §309 project, which focused on Jamaica and Sargent Beaches. This Project will include pre-nourishment sampling at the SPI beach every other month for 10+ months. Three control beaches will also be selected and sampled. Macrofaunal samples will be sent to a lab for enumeration, biomass measurements, and identification. Patterns in the benthic community and differences between sites will be in the final report. Upon written agreement of the Texas General Land Office (GLO) and TAMUCC, work will later be continued under a separate contract and funding source to collect post-nourishment data. Data from both contracts will be analyzed (along with the ongoing work at Jamaica and Sargent Beaches) to determine average time for benthic community recovery following beach nourishment on Texas beaches. GLO will use study results to determine an allowable frequency of beach nourishment under a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Regional General Permit.