The Formation And Future Of The Upper Texas Coast

Author : John B. Anderson
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2007-05-24
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1585445614

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The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast by John B. Anderson Pdf

With strong personal and professional ties to the Gulf of Mexico, marine geologist John B. Anderson has spent two decades studying the Texas coastline and continental shelf. In this book, he sets out to answer fundamental questions that are frequently asked about the coast—how it evolved; how it operates; how natural processes affect it and why it is ever changing; and, finally, how human development can be managed to help preserve it. The book provides an amply illustrated look at ocean waves and currents, beach formation and erosion, barrier island evolution, hurricanes, and sea level changes. With an abundance of visual material—including aerial photos, historical maps, simple figures, and satellite images—the author presents a lively, interesting lesson in coastal geography that readers will remember and appreciate the next time they are at the beach and want to know: What happens to the sand that erodes from our beaches? Can beach erosion be stopped—and should we try? How much sand will be needed to stabilize our beaches? Does a hurricane have any positive impacts? How much development can the coast withstand? This entertaining and instructive book provides authoritative answers to these and other questions that are essential to our understanding of coastal change.

Author : John B. Anderson
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2007-05-24
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781585445615

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The Formation and Future of the Upper Texas Coast by John B. Anderson Pdf

With strong personal and professional ties to the Gulf of Mexico, marine geologist John B. Anderson has spent two decades studying the Texas coastline and continental shelf. In this book, he sets out to answer fundamental questions that are frequently asked about the coast—how it evolved; how it operates; how natural processes affect it and why it is ever changing; and, finally, how human development can be managed to help preserve it. The book provides an amply illustrated look at ocean waves and currents, beach formation and erosion, barrier island evolution, hurricanes, and sea level changes. With an abundance of visual material—including aerial photos, historical maps, simple figures, and satellite images—the author presents a lively, interesting lesson in coastal geography that readers will remember and appreciate the next time they are at the beach and want to know: What happens to the sand that erodes from our beaches? Can beach erosion be stopped—and should we try? How much sand will be needed to stabilize our beaches? Does a hurricane have any positive impacts? How much development can the coast withstand? This entertaining and instructive book provides authoritative answers to these and other questions that are essential to our understanding of coastal change.

Author : John Whorff
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2011-02-10
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781603442251

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Kayaking the Texas Coast by John Whorff Pdf

“Few experiences compare with navigating a sea kayak through a large sandy bay lined with oyster-shell beaches, past golden sand dunes into rough ocean waters, then surfing back onto a wind-swept beach at sunset.”—from the Introduction Half of the nearly 400-mile Texas coastline is flanked by barrier islands. Behind them, large and small bays shelter estuarine marshes, oyster-reef communities, and sea grass meadows that teem with wildlife, creating a bird watcher's and angler's paradise. For an intimate encounter with these natural treasures, no other water craft can compare to a kayak. Veteran kayaker John Whorff’s Kayaking the Texas Coast is an essential guide for beginning and experienced kayakers to the many miles of shoreline that surround the shallow bays, lagoons, and islands of the Texas coast. Novices will appreciate this book’s detailed information about where to paddle and camp, what to see, and where to obtain additional information about safety and route planning. Accomplished kayakers will enjoy Whorff’s enticing route descriptions and other pertinent details on paddling the Texas coastline. Opening with an extended introductory text that covers kayaks and equipment, safety considerations and emergencies, camping dos and don’ts, and helpful resources, Kayaking the Texas Coast also lists useful websites and guidebooks. In the main portion of the text, the coast is organized into ten destinations, from the Galveston Bay complex in the north to Boca Chica State Park in the south. For each of these destinations, Whorff provides information on navigational aids, planning considerations, accommodations, and directions to launch sites before describing various paddling routes within each destination—around seventy routes in all. Each route is ranked for difficulty as “beginner,” “intermediate,” or “advanced.” Detailed maps and vivid photographs by the author complete the package. "Kayaking the Texas Coast is your must-have guidebook to the coastline and bays of the Lone Star State. Many miles of sea kayaking adventure are described, along with maps and discussion of the natural world encountered along the way. My copy will be riding in car and kayak with me. I look forward to seeing with my own eyes what the author has described and mapped."-- Natalie Wiest, founder and director, Galveston Bay Information

Author : John W. Tunnell,Jace Tunnell
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2015-05-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781623492748

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Pioneering Archaeology in the Texas Coastal Bend by John W. Tunnell,Jace Tunnell Pdf

When Harold F. Pape moved to Gregory, Texas, in 1927, he quickly became fascinated by the wealth of Native American artifacts along the nearby shoreline of Corpus Christi Bay and what is now called Port Bay, a southern arm of the larger Copano Bay. A lifelong natural history enthusiast and collector, Pape met and married Lucile H. Tunnell, a widow with three young sons. Before long, John W. Tunnell, Lucile’s oldest son, was accompanying Pape on his field studies in surrounding areas and the wider Texas Coastal Bend. Working in the days before much of the development that now covers the region, Pape and Tunnell studied more than two hundred sites throughout the Coastal Bend, making meticulous logs, maps, and notes of their discoveries. John W. (Wes) Tunnell Jr. and Jace Tunnell have organized and documented their family collection and present it, along with brief biographies of the two collectors, as a survey of the state of knowledge in the late 1920s and 1930s, as well as a tribute to these two important early researchers and their body of work.

Author : Christopher Hight,Rice University. School of Architecture
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Galveston Island (Tex.)
ISBN : 9781257825080

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Atlas of Sustainable Strategies for Galveston Island by Christopher Hight,Rice University. School of Architecture Pdf

Author : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Environmental Change and Society,Ocean Studies Board,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on Long-Term Coastal Zone Dynamics: Interactions and Feedbacks Between Natural and Human Processes Along the U.S. Gulf Coast
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2018-11-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780309475846

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Understanding the Long-Term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human Coastal System by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Environmental Change and Society,Ocean Studies Board,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on Long-Term Coastal Zone Dynamics: Interactions and Feedbacks Between Natural and Human Processes Along the U.S. Gulf Coast Pdf

The U.S. Gulf Coast provides a valuable setting to study deeply connected natural and human interactions and feedbacks that have led to a complex, interconnected coastal system. The physical landscape in the region has changed significantly due to broad-scale, long-term processes such as coastal subsidence and river sediment deposition as well as short-term episodic events such as hurricanes. Modifications from human activities, including building levees and canals and constructing buildings and roads, have left their own imprint on the natural landscape. This coupled natural-human coastal system and the individual aspects within it (physical, ecological, and human) are under increased pressure from accelerating environmental stressors such as sea level rise, intensifying hurricanes, and continued population increase with its accompanying coastal development. Promoting the resilience and maintaining the habitability of the Gulf Coast into the future will need improved understanding of the coupled natural-human coastal system, as well as effective sharing of this understanding in support of decision-making and policies. Understanding the Long-term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human Coastal System presents a research agenda meant to enable a better understanding of the multiple and interconnected factors that influence long-term processes along the Gulf Coast. This report identifies scientific and technical gaps in understanding the interactions and feedbacks between human and natural processes, defines essential components of a research and development program in response to the identified gaps, and develops priorities for critical areas of research.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 570 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Electronic
ISBN : NWU:35556041615444

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Sabine-Neches Waterway Channel Improvement Project, Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana by Anonim Pdf

Author : Louise Hayes
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-02
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781623493875

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Alligators of Texas by Louise Hayes Pdf

Found only in the United States, the American alligator ranges in Texas through 120 counties, from the Sabine River to the Rio Grande, across a swath of river drainages and coastal marshes that include both the backwater swamps of the Big Thicket and the urban bayous of greater Houston. From its beginning in a pile of eggs buried in a meticulously constructed nest to its possible end as an alligator burger or a pair of boots, an alligator’s habitat preferences sometimes coincide with the favorite haunts of boaters, hunters, and coastal residents. In Alligators of Texas, biologist Louise Hayes and photographer Philippe Henry bring readers up close to this cryptic reptile’s food choices, parenting skills, communication techniques, and responses to natural events such as freezes and hurricanes. They also relate some Texas “alligator tales”; discuss alligator farming, hunting, and live capturing; and examine how people can successfully co-exist with this predator. They end by telling readers where they can view alligators, both in the wild and in captivity. Although not as often, as easily, or perhaps as happily observed as white-tailed deer or armadillos, the American alligator is an iconic Texas animal, and knowing more about its life and habits can help Texans better understand its rightful place in the landscape.

Author : R. K. Sawyer
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2013-08-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9781623490119

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Texas Market Hunting by R. K. Sawyer Pdf

From its earliest days of human habitation, the Texas coast was home to seemingly endless clouds of ducks, geese, swans, and shorebirds. By the 1880s Texas huntsmen, or market hunters, as they came to be called, began providing meat and plumage for the restaurant tables and millinery salons of a rapidly growing nation. A network of suppliers, packers, distribution centers, and shipping hubs efficiently handled their immense harvest. At the peak of Texas market hunting in the late 1890s, Rockport merchants shipped an average of 600 ducks a day in a five-month shooting season, and in the last year of legal market hunting, an estimated 60,000 ducks and geese were shipped from Corpus Christi alone. Market men employed efficient methods to harvest nature’s bounty. They commonly hunted at night, often using bait to concentrate large numbers of waterfowl. The effectiveness of the hunt was improved when side-by-side double barrel shotguns and large-gauge swivel guns gave way to repeating firearms, with some capable of discharging as many as eleven shells in a single volley. Their methods were so efficient that, by the late 1800s, Texas sportsmen and others blamed the alarming decline of coastal waterfowl populations on the market hunter’s occupation. In 1903, after a long fight and many failures, the first migratory bird game law passed the Texas legislature. Though the fight would continue, it was the beginning of the end of the year-round slaughter. Most market hunters quit, and those who didn’t became outlaws. In this book, R. K. Sawyer chronicles the days of market hunting along the Texas coast and the showdown between the early game wardens and those who persisted in commercial waterfowl hunting. Containing an abundance of rare historical photographs and oral history, Texas Market Hunting: Stories of Waterfowl, Game Laws, and Outlaws provides a comprehensive and colorful account of this bygone period.

Author : Bryan Carlile
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 145 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : HISTORY
ISBN : 9781603443234

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After Ike by Bryan Carlile Pdf

Featuring a personal essay, "Living in Hurricane Alley," written by Andrew Sansom The day after Hurricane Ike made U.S. landfall at Galveston, Texas, photographer Bryan Carlile was in a helicopter, working a service contract as a first responder. "After Ike" includes more than one hundred aerial photographs Carlile took of the hurricane's grim aftermath, accompanied by his eyewitness captions.

Author : Jesse Cancelmo
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-22
Category : Photography
ISBN : 9781623493745

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Glorious Gulf of Mexico by Jesse Cancelmo Pdf

Stunned by widespread ignorance about the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Macondo oil spill, underwater photographer Jesse Cancelmo decided to turn his camera on the marine life of this 600,000 square mile international sea that connects five US states, six Mexican states, and the island nation of Cuba. With the goal of countering dismissive descriptions of a Gulf plagued with dead zones and overrun by oil rigs, Cancelmo set out to capture a world rarely acknowledged, let alone seen. Between the Gulf's rich shoreline habitats and its prolific oceanic communities, thriving amid dazzling coral reefs, brine seeps, canyons, salt domes, and hard bottom banks, are more than 15,000 species, including an iconic cast of sea animals: sperm whales, manta rays, whale sharks, manatees, spotted dolphins, and more. Capturing images from locations all around the Gulf, Cancelmo reveals the beauty and glory of these diverse habitats and species. Although this is a book of sensational underwater photography, Cancelmo intends it to be more than a celebration of oceanic beauty. He also hopes to inspire better understanding and appreciation of the natural marine habitats in the Gulf and to strengthen support for their protection and sustainment.

Author : Mary Katherine Wicksten
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2015-10-30
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781623493110

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Vertical Reefs by Mary Katherine Wicksten Pdf

On a clear night, the bright lights of oil platforms sparkle in the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of these platforms off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana play an important role in the lives of underwater species who find food, shelter, and permanent homes in the ecosystem created by these big, three-dimensional structures standing on the flat sea floor. They may also play lesser-known roles “above the waves” in the migration of birds and even insects. Tapping into years of diving experience, marine biologist Mary Wicksten looks at the inhabitants and visitors of these “vertical reefs”, explaining how life arrives on the platforms, what species settle and stay (like barnacles), and which ones visit then disappear (like silky sharks). She looks at how different life forms take up occupancy from the surface downward, and she shows how these communities vary on nearshore and deepwater platforms. While most people may never experience the undersea world of oil platforms, this book will bring a better understanding of it to any teacher, beachgoer, angler, diver, or coastal resident who ever wondered what was going on beneath those far-off lights.

Author : David A. McKee,Henry Compton
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-27
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9781623490317

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Fire in the Sea by David A. McKee,Henry Compton Pdf

The cold, stygian dark of the extreme sea depths is home to some of our planet’s strangest creatures. Even their names evoke a science fiction adventure: dragonfishes, greeneyes, viperfishes, mirrorbellies, lanternfishes. Marine biologist Henry “Hank” Compton (1928–2005) of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Rockport Marine Lab was present on some of the earliest Gulf of Mexico cruises on which these fishes were collected for the first time in Texas waters. Upon returning, Compton would retire to the darkroom he had constructed beneath a stairwell at the lab and photograph the specimens. A talented artist, Compton then painted watercolors based on his photographs. He allowed free rein to both his scientific judgment and his artistic vision as he constructed representations of how the specimens might have appeared in the crushing pressure of their alien environment. Compton dubbed the series of deep-water paintings “Fire in the Sea” because of the shimmering bioluminescence common to these deep-water species. Then, along with taxonomic descriptions, he drafted fanciful narratives to accompany the paintings: quirky, humorous, and sometimes cryptic stories of the fishes in their unreachable habitat. Professor, researcher, and author David A. McKee has taken Compton’s work, discovered in cardboard boxes following his death, and, along with others, provided chapters on bioluminescence, life in the deep, taxonomic arrangement, and life history information.

Author : Hart Stilwell
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2011-04-07
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781603442671

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Glory of the Silver King by Hart Stilwell Pdf

A tribute to a fish, a sport, and a time now past . . . Through a series of chance encounters over several years, fishing guide and journalist Brandon Shuler unearthed multiple drafts of a nearly finished manuscript by an almost forgotten Texas sports writer, Hart Stilwell. Titled “Glory of the Silver King,”the manuscript vividly captured the history of tarpon and snook fishing on the Texas and Mexico Gulf Coast from the 1930s to the end of Stilwell’s life in the early 1970s. Stilwell was a seasoned outdoors journalist with a passion for salt-water fishing. Now, with Shuler’s careful research, editing, and annotation, this lost manuscript has found new life as both an entertaining “fish tale” and a historical snapshot of a region’s natural heritage. It successfully conveys the thrill of fishing for these once abundant species at the same time it tracks—and laments—the rise, decline, and eventual fall of their fisheries in Texas (which Shuler is able to report are now experiencing a rebound). In a personal and informative introduction, Shuler paints a portrait of Stilwell and tells the story of the discovery and evolution of the manuscript. He also provides a look into his own life as an angler and writer, creating a connection with Stilwell that gives the work authenticity and relevance. Anglers will delight in Stilwell’s rollicking prose. Environmentalists will appreciate the book’s lesson in ocean conservation. For all who live on or near the Gulf Coast, Glory of the Silver King reintroduces a forgotten literary treasure and a magnificent fish that once filled the waters at our favorite coastal retreats. "Hart Stilwell was a world-class raconteur and storyteller. His unpublished manuscript on the glory days of coastal fishing became an underground legend, passed around like a sacred totem for decades. Editor Brandon Shuler has revived Stilwell’s folksy charm and penetrating insights, and the result is this engaging and important book."--Steven L. Davis, curator, The Wittliff Collections

Author : Ann McCutchan,Earl Robicheaux
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2011-09-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781603442893

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River Music by Ann McCutchan,Earl Robicheaux Pdf

Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River Basin, the heart and soul of Acadiana, or Cajun country, is the focus of this compelling narrative by Ann McCutchan. A masterful weaving of cultural and environmental history, River Music also tells the life story of Louisiana musician, naturalist, and sound documentarian Earl Robicheaux. With Robicheaux as her guide, McCutchan embarks on a musical, visual, literary, and historical tour of the Atchafalaya, where bayous, swamps, marshes, and river delta country have long sustained nature and culture, even as industry has changed both the landscape and the people. Along the way, she and Robicheaux pay homage to distinctive voices of the region’s singular soundscape, including Acadian and Native American elders, birds, frogs, alligators, wind, water, and weather, which Robicheaux chronicles in archival recordings and musical compositions for museum exhibits, radio programs, and repositories such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. A CD of Robicheaux's soundscapes is included with the book. In counterpoint, McCutchan recounts Robicheaux’s remarkable struggles as a jazz and classical artist, Katrina victim, cancer survivor, and steadfast son of the Basin devoted to remembering, preserving, and sounding out the ecological and cultural riches of his home. An original blend of nature writing, music history, biography, journalism, and memoir, River Music: An Atchafalaya Story eloquently celebrates the one-and-half-million watery acres that have shaped the lives of the people there—and been transformed by them in return. An epilogue written in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the disastrous oil spill that followed provides a fitting and poignant coda to this memorable book.