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MNS 383 Coastal Watersheds, Spring 2008



Instructor: Jim McClelland
Unique#: 57610
Meeting Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00-3:30 pm
Location: ACES 3.336
More info: jimm@mail.utexas.edu

Composite image of the land-sea interface northeast of Corpus Christi, TX. Water use and Land use/cover mosaics in coastal watersheds determine the export of nutrients, organic matter and contaminates to the coastal ocean.
Composite image of the land-sea interface northeast of Corpus Christi, TX. Water use and Land use/cover mosaics in coastal watersheds determine the export of nutrients, organic matter and contaminates to the coastal ocean.

This course will foster an integrated understanding of topics such as water use, land use/land cover change, and climate change as they relate to biological, physical, and geochemical processes in watersheds. Impacts of changing watershed export on coastal ocean ecosystems will also be addressed. We will begin the semester with a series of lectures and discussions on specific topics related to watershed science. Guests from a variety of departments including Civil Engineering, Geosciences, Architecture, and Marine Science will give lectures that emphasize their core research areas. These lectures will include examples from watersheds in Texas as well as other locations around the world. Concepts from the topical lectures will then be linked through a series of cross-cutting student presentations and synthesis discussions. Finally, students will participate in comprehensive analyses of three watershed-coastal ocean systems in different regions of the US (northeast, west coast, Texas coast) subject to different climate regimes, land use patterns, and oceanographic conditions. These comprehensive analyses will emphasize (1) the interactions among different watershed characteristics that influence the quantity and quality of water exported from land to sea and (2) the role of oceanographic characteristics in mediating the response of coastal ecosystems to changes in the quantity and quality of freshwater inputs. Our analysis focusing on Texas will include a field trip to active research and monitoring sites.

This course will be offered over a video link so that students at the Marine Science Institute as well as Austin can participate. At least half of the class meetings will be conducted in Austin.