Resource Capability Units: Their Utility in Land- and Water-Use Management with Examples from the Texas Coastal Zone

GC7101. Resource Capability Units: Their Utility in Land- and Water-Use Management with Examples from the Texas Coastal Zone, by L. F. Brown, Jr., W. L. Fisher, A. W. Erxleben, and J. H. McGowen. 22 p., 4  figs., 1971.


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Excerpted from the Introduction
A resource capability unit is an environmental entity--land, water, area of active process, or biota--defined in terms of the nature, degree of activity, or use it can sustain without losing an acceptable level of environmental quality. Units are established by recognizing elements of first-order environmental significance, whether dominantly physical, biologic, or chemical. These include (1) physical units (geologic substrate and soil units), where physical properties are of primary importance; (2) process units, such as beaches, washover channels, floodplains, escarpments, and dunes where active physical processes are dominant factors; (3) biologic units,such as reefs, marshes, swamps, and grassflats where biologic activity and habitation assume first-order significance; and (4) man-made units such as spoil heaps, dredged channels, canals, and made land where man's activity has resulted in important environmental modification. Capability of water systems is defined by the nature and distribution of sediment substrate, overall salinity patterns, circulation, tidal influence, depth variations, turbidity, fresh-water influx, distribution of biologic communities, and water chemistry.

This report outlines (1) the nature of resource capability units, (2) the basic factors and properties exhibited by the units that define the limits of their use, and (3)the application of resource capability units to environmental management. Specific examples are shown for the 20,000 square miles of the Texas Coastal Zone, where a wide variety of resource units occur in an area of diverse human activities.



Keywords: Texas Coastal Zone, Texas, land use, land management, water use, resource management


CONTENTS
Introduction

Definition of resource capability units

Factors affecting water and land capability

Resource use practices

Derivation of resource capability units

An Example·· Resource capability units of the Texas Coastal Zone

Resource capability units, Texas Coastal Zone

Bays, lagoons, and estuaries

River-influenced bay

Enclosed bay

Oyster reefs and adjacent reef flank and inter-reef areas (living)

Oyster and serpulid reefs and adjacent reef-flank and inter-reef areas (dead)

Grassflats

Mobile bay-margin sands

Tidally influenced open bay

Subaqueous spoil areas

Tidal inlet and tidal delta

Wind-tidal flats

Coastal plains

Highly permeable sands

Moderately permeable sands
Impermeable muds
Broad, shallow depressions
Highly forested upland areas
Steep lands

Stabilized, vegetated dunes and sand flats

Unstabilized, unvegetated dunes

Fresh-water lakes, ponds, sloughs, playas

Mainland beaches

Area of active faulting and subsidence

Major floodplain systems

Point-bar sands

Overbank muds and silts

Water

Coastal wetlands

Made land and spoil

Coastal barriers

Beach and shoreface

Fore·island dunes and vegetated barrier flats

Washover areas

Active dunes

Tidal flats

Swales

Application to management programs

Coastal Zone bibliography

FIGURES

1. Schematic map of major land and water resource capability classes, Texas Coastal Zone

2. Schematic map of land and water resource capability units, moderately humid upper Texas Coastal Zone

3. Schematic map of land and water resource capability units, coastal bend region, Texas Coastal Zone

4. Schematic map of land and water resource capability units, arid south Texas Coastal Zone

TABLES

1. Resource capability units, Texas Coastal Zone

2. Major activities, Texas Coastal Zone

3. Coastal Zone resource units--use and capabilities


Citation
Brown, L. F., Jr., Fisher, W. L., Erxleben, A. W., and McGowen, J. H., 1971, Resource Capability Units: Their Utility in Land- and Water-Use Management with Examples from the Texas Coastal Zone: The University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, Geological Circular 71-1, 22 p.