Since 1978, six climate- and erosion-monitoring stations on slopes in draws and large playa lake basins in the interior of the Southern High Plains and slopes along the Caprock Escarpment in the Rolling Plains of the Texas Panhandle have recorded precipitation amount and intensity, air and soil temperature, soil electrical resistance (soil moisture), slope erosion and deposition, and slope and stream headcut retreat. Stations are located in areas of active erosion.

The State-owned submerged lands of Texas encompass almost 6,000 mi2 (15,540 km2). They lie below waters of the bay-estuary-lagoon system and the Gulf of Mexico and extend 10.3 mi (16.6 km) seaward from the Gulf shoreline (fig. 1). The importance of these lands and their resources to resident flora and fauna as well as to people is well known and documented; more than one-third of the state's population is concentrated within an area of the Coastal Zone that is only about one-sixteenth of the state's land area.

Porous and permeable strata of the Deep-Basin Brine aquifer underlie bedded evaporites that are being considered as repositories for high-level nuclear waste isolation in the Palo Duro Basin, Texas Panhandle. Formation-water samples collected from four U.S.

Deep brine aquifers of the Palo Duro Basin, Texas Panhandle, ranging in depth from about 1,000 to 3,000 m below land surface, are underpressured compared with the shallow Ogallala aquifer. Two-dimensional simulations of flow in an east-west regional cross-sectional model through the basin permitted us to characterize regional ground-water flow, to investigate causes of underpressuring below the Evaporite aquitard, and to evaluate mechanisms of recharge and discharge to and from the Deep-Basin Brine aquifer.