Abstract
The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge has been experiencing extensive erosion along the bank of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. A project was initiated to study the wave conditions in the channel in order to evaluate the respective energies of the wind waves and ship induced water motions. The wind wave analysis is examined in this thesis with a brief summary of the ship induced water motions. The wind wave characteristics were measured at the refuge and are compared to the characteristics generated by the wind wave model for restricted fetches in the computer program ACES. The comparisons show a tendency of ACES to overpredict waves when the wind was blowing along the channel and underpredict waves when the wind was blowing across the channel. These tendencies may be explained by the lack of consideration of the fetch width. A wind hindcast of the area 's developed and used with ACES to generate a wave hindcast (seasonal and year-round). The wave hindcast is then used to calculate the wind wave energy over one year, which is found to be several orders of magnitude less than the ship wave energy.
Hershberger, Darla Anne (1993). A study of wind waves in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway near the Arkansas National Wildlife Refuge. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1993 -THESIS -H572.