The texas coastal zone is an important ecological and recreational area whose water quality is challenged by pollution, wastewater discharge, and runoff from rapid development

There is a well-documented* problem with fecal bacterial contamination in some locations along the texas coast. Limited studies available underscore the multifactorial nature of this water quality issue. Factors include freshwater discharge to the coast, particularly in extreme weather events, coupled with climate change effects and coastal changes from land-use change (development, population increases). Climate change in particular will affect coastal water temperatures, PH, composition, and organic matter composition (which in turn affects viability of bacteria), and sea-level changes. Texas has a large coastal community, and at the same time, some highly socio-economically vulnerable populationsport arthur and brownsville have consistently ranked as some of the poorest communities in texas. We propose a pilot project to develop an environmental forensics approach as a tool for understanding and predicting fecal bacterial contamination for coastal management. The approach we propose involves multivariate analysis of a suite of water quality parameters, including parameters in common use (enterococcus counts, major ions in seawater, chlorophyll), augmented with two new types of data. The new types of data we will incorporate are based on recent innovations in measurement of bacteria and optical brighteners. Analytical techniques have now been developed for community scientists to measure bacteria and other microorganisms with rapid test kits, and optical brighteners have recently come into use as surrogates of sanitary wastewater in storm drainage outfalls and receiving waters. The meadows center principal investigators and researchers for this project have been involved in foundational research in these fields. The new techniques that we will employ will be performed on a high-throughput basis (both for water-quality analysis and with a pipeline to automated data analysis), which is an important facet for being logistically feasible for the development of tools for coastal management. The resulting data from the pilot project will be analyzed using an environmental forensics approach, including standard techniques in multivariate analysis, as well as emerging techniques in artificial intelligence. Resultant data and codes will be published on an open-source basis. The texas coastal environment is ideal for this pilot project, both because IT is comparatively understudied with respect to the indicators and approach proposed here, and in terms of community need and benefit. The study areas will target texas bays and estuaries with historically high levels of bacteria, such as recreational beaches in harris, matagorda, and nueces counties.