GEI: Synthesizing environmental and biological monitoring data to assess how fisheries resources along Texas coasts are impacted by severe weather events, using a total ecosystem approach

This proposal addresses the needs of fisheries and resource managers in response to severe weather. Our goal is to evaluate how severe weather (e.g. hurricanes, floods, droughts, and freezes) affects the ecosystem at multiple levels from water quality, nutrients, and zooplankton, to fish in the Mission-Aransas Estuary and Galveston Bay, Texas. The western Gulf of Mexico coasts have been particularly affected by increasing frequency of severe weather. Although fishery managers have responded to the acute impacts of severe weather, there is a need to understand the long-term dynamics of these events on the populations across the entire ecosystem. We have obtained an extensive collection of long-term data spanning the entirety of the ecosystem in both estuaries, which include hydrology, water quality and chemistry, primary production, zooplankton, benthic fauna, and nekton. Utilizing a working group approach will leverage these time series data, while ensuring the conclusions of the analysis are transferred to the resource managers. We will use different statistical methods from box-models to multivariate time-series and empirical dynamic modeling. All data products and model results will be posted to the Mission Aransas NERR website, and shared with partner agencies and NGOs through reports, peer-reviewed publications, workshops, and conferences.