Improving Coastal Resilience and Water Quality through Proactive Planning for Sea Level Rise: Phase 2

Principal Investigator

Since 2017, the Texas Coastal Resiliency Master Plan (TCRMP) has been a valuable, long-term, state-led coastal planning platform, providing a vision to protect Texas coastal communities, habitats, and infrastructure. The TCRMP offers a range of nature-based and infrastructure improvement ideas to create a multiple lines of defense approach to comprehensively confront the ever-changing threats to Texas coastal areas. Each iteration of the TCRMP aims to adapt to changing coastal conditions and evolving citizen needs. The third iteration of the TCRMP was released in April 2023 and presented 121 projects that factor in coastal pressures, vulnerabilities, flood and storm surge modeling, socioeconomics, and stated stakeholder community needs.

The GLO wants to continue to proactively adapt the TCRMP by expanding modeling efforts that, along with the GLO’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), drive the determination of the TCRMP’s project list.

To date, TCRMP project recommendations have been determined and justified, in part, by using the output of anticipated future conditions modeling. Modeling results completed using a combination of SLAMM, SWAN, and ADCIRC, illuminate the dire need for various types of coastal projects to counteract adverse impacts on habitat health and increasing vulnerability of coastal communities in the face of anticipated elevated sea levels into the year 2100.

The GLO will contract with Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Harte Research Institute (HRI) to conduct additional modeling that will assess the impacts of projected urban growth and sprawl on water quality and the environment within the coastal zone. The model will look at the influence of unmitigated growth on urban floodplains, water quality structures/facilities, and sensitive landscapes most likely to experience land conversion due to urban expansion.

Modeling results will help guide proactive local planning and project development focused on maintaining and improving the potency of ecosystem services provided by watershed and riparian areas including recreational and aesthetic values, critical wildlife habitat, flood water storage and conveyance, and improvements to estuarine water quality and quantity.

The end goal is to utilize the urban growth modeling output, in combination with input from coastal communities and the TAC, to expand the list of TCRMP projects. Overall, the effort will refine and incorporate important information regarding coastal change into future conservation and restoration projects, allowing the GLO to identify areas prone to coastal hazards, and put actions in place that will preserve and conserve the areas for generations to come.