Geological Framework Study of Follett's Island-Brazoria County – Phase II – Data Processing and Modeling

Summary

During the summer of 2013, Texas A&M at Galveston (TAMUG) was funded to collect the swath bathymetry and side scan sonar data needed to mosaic the inner shelf of Folletts Island from a depth of 3 meter to 10 meter isobaths. In addition, TAMUG was funded to collect a series of seven beach profiles along the island extending out to the offshore survey area, to tie these data sets together.

The goals of this study are to process the bathymetric and side scan sonar data, continue the beach profiling as a time series to collect winter profiles at the same location as the summer profiles, and to collect land-based LIDAR to create a seamless bathymetric/topographic data set extending from the 10 meter isobath offshore to the bayside of the island. The resulting scan of the beach and dune system (across the entire island-to-bay shoreline) will provide high-resolution topographic cross-sections to be modeled in a process-based numerical model (CSHORE) that predicts cross-shore morphology changes of barrier island systems. TAMUG will use historic and newly obtained data to calibrate and modify CSHORE.