CWSS News
2024
September Congratulations to Alan Innes in the Ahmed Geophysics lab! The Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists (SIPES) awarded Alan the Bobby M. Greenwood scholarship. Alan was one of eight undergraduate and graduate students to be awarded a SIPES academic scholarship this year with awards totaling over $30,000.
SIPES is a national organization of more than 700 self-employed geologists, geophysicists and engineers engaged primarily in domestic energy exploration and development and has twelve chapters located in oil and gas centers of the United States.
September PUBLICATION ALERT: The Murgulet Hydrogeology Lab published a paper titled "Influence of submarine groundwater discharge on the nutrient dynamics of a fringing-reef lagoon" in the Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies.
August Congratulations to Skylar Meehan for completing her Master's in Coastal and Marine System Science and graduating. Skylar's defended her thesis on "Coastal Karst Groundwater Dynamics: A Geochemical Analysis of the Yucatán's Karst Aquifer Vulnerability" in July. Skylar has accepted a position as a hydrologist at the Texas Water Development Board.
May-August CWSS welcomed several SURF REU students for the summer. The students engaged in multidisciplinary research with the Center labs that focuses on current critical topics, such as climate change, coastal and oceanographic environmental issues, water resource management, biodiversity loss, and sustainable development. The students presented the projects they worked on over the summer to the faculty, staff, and students from all REU labs.
April Congratulations! Kaiya Shealy successfully defended her MS thesis on "NOx Source Apportionment and Oxidation Chemistry in a Coastal Urban Airshed Using Stable Isotope Techniques". She will be starting a PhD program in Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University-College Station in the fall.
February Dr. Felix is initiating an NSF funded REU program this summer titled "Summer Undergraduate Research Focus (SURF): Anthropogenic Impacts on Coastal and Marine Systems". Applications close 3/15/2024. Program Link: https://reutamucc.weebly.com/
January PUBLICATION ALERT: The Murgulet Hydro Lab published a paper titled "Nitrogen and carbon cycling and relationships to radium behavior in porewater and surface water: Insights from a dry year sampling in a hypersaline estuary" in the journal Marine Chemistry.
January CWSS students, Ifeanyi Anyanwu, Laura Button, and Allyson Girard start their NRT STAGES training. Congratulations and good luck with your traineeship!
May A Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) National Science Foundation (NSF) project grant was awarded to Dr. Dorina Murgulet (PI) and her co-PIs (Drs. Frauke Seemann, Ioana Pavel, Vikram Kapoor [University of Texas at San Antonio], and Isabel Araiza [Del Mar College]) to explore the intricate relationship between extreme wet events, groundwater pollution, and socio-economic well-being. The project aims to provide actionable insights and strategies to mitigate risks and enhance the well-being of unincorporated communities.
Graphical Abstract: Conceptual model of change in hydrological system and occurrence of studied dissolve inorganic and organic compounds before and during/after Hurricane Harvey.
Figure 1: (A) The Hurricane Harvey path and Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale categories (Blake and Zelinsky, 2018) and precipitation totals. (B) The geographic location of the study area with major river basins, stream gauges (Nueces River at Calallen, TX [08211500], and Oso Creek at Corpus Christi [08211520]), salinity stations (Nueces Bay [NUDE3, 043] and Bird Island [NPSBI, 171]), waste water treatment plants (WWTP), and Harvey storm track shown. Samples were collected from the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi beach on Ward Island (University Beach). (C) Overhead view of Ward Island (credit:TAMUCC MARCOM, CCBY-SA 4.0) showing the location of the sampling transect for the vertical crosssectional representation of the study site with the sampling locations of groundwater and porewater shown. Surface water was collected inline with the groundwater and porewater within 10m of the waterline.
