In February, two members of GCCC, Susan Hovorka and Emily Moskal, attended a meeting of the Texas Chapter of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA) to meet a diverse group of stakeholders whose work or interest centers around the Texas coastline.

As indicated by ASBPA’s website, the organization’s membership is comprised of a variety of professionals including engineers, scientists, planners, public officials, and other professionals who are interested in the protection, restoration, and management of the shores and beaches of U.S. bays, harbors, oceans, and the Great Lakes.

During the meeting, Hovorka and Moskal listened to Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush talk about actions that the state representatives are taking to preserve Texas’ legacy along the coast.

Also at that meeting, Hovorka and Moskal met the hosts and producers of the American Shoreline Podcast Network. Since then, GCCC researchers have been featured in two podcasts. The first was released that same month, featuring Hovorka and her general overview of carbon sequestration. The second was published last week and featured Katherine Romanak who spoke about the measures GCCC and other research groups take to mitigate carbon sequestration risks.

Also this month on April 15 and 16, GCCC program manager Ramón Treviño attended the annual symposium and field trip of the ASBPA Texas Chapter, hosted at the Harte Research Institute of the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

During the first day, Treviño participated in a field trip led by Dr. Mark Besonen, an associate research scientist at the Harte Research Institute. The trip was co-led by Randy Bissell, the geoscience advisor to Headington Energy Partners LLC in Corpus Christi. Besonen described the trip as offering “a longer-term, geological perspective that considers past shorelines and coastal configurations [and how] they can inform us about [the] present and future coastal change.”

The field trip stops were at the following coastal features: 1) a recent (approximately four-year-old) bay-front slump on a bluff on the western shoreline of Corpus Christi Bay, 2) the modern Nueces River bayhead delta, 3) Oslo Bay, a Pleistocene-age lagoon that developed during the previous (Eemian stage) interglacial, and 4) the beach and dunes of the modern barrier island system at the southern end of Mustang Island.

During the second day, Treviño presented an introductory CCS symposium talk titled, “Carbon Capture and Sequestration (Storage) – CCS: A Climate Change Mitigation Strategy for the Near-Offshore Northwestern Gulf of Mexico.”

Global climate change, specifically sea-level rise, was either an explicit or implicit focus of many symposium talks. During his talk, Treviño emphasized the potential of CCS to reduce the amount of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere from CO₂ point sources and thus mitigate sea level rise and its negative impact on the coast. After the presentation, several audience members, who were previously unfamiliar with the technology, expressed interest in CCS.

Because a large part of our work at the GCCC centers around engaging new perspectives and new stakeholders in the region, this symposium and its professional networking created an opportunity for the team to make connections that, either directly or indirectly, relate to our offshore regional partnership studies. We look forward to more interactions with the ASBPA community and how the community’s expertise can inform our work on the Texas near offshore.