Sabine River Monitoring
The Sabine River Basin is approximately 300 miles long and extends from northeastern Texas to Sabine Lake and on to the Gulf of Mexico. The Sabine River and watershed provide a wide variety of recreational opportunities, such as fishing, boating, hiking, hunting, etc. to countless residents and visitors each year.
Since 1982, Eastman Chemical Company, Texas Operations has sponsored a series of biological and water-quality surveys on the Sabine River near Longview, Texas, by the Patrick Center for Environmental Research of The Academy of Natural Sciences. The present study was conducted in October of 2005; previous studies were completed in 1982, 1987, 1995 and 2000.
The Sabine River surveys are designed to assess the potential impacts of effluent from Eastman's Longview facility on the general "health" of the river. Components of the surveys include environmental chemistry (water, sediments, fish, and clams), attached algae and aquatic plants, macroinvertebrates, and fish. Multiple levels of the aquatic food web are studied because no single group is reliably the best indicator of the health of an ecosystem, and also because it is widely believed that maintaining the integrity of the entire ecosystem is very important.
The study design employed in the Sabine River surveys includes four main sampling zones: three exposed to Eastman's operations (Zones 2, 3 and 4), and an unexposed reference zone (Zone 1) upstream from the facility.
Potential impacts of Eastman operations are assessed by determining whether differences exist between the exposed and reference zones that can't be attributed merely to natural differences among sites or to disturbances originating upstream from the Eastman facility. Signs of impact might include fewer numbers of species and individuals, increased dominance by a small proportion of the species present, or slower individual growth rates.
Determining whether exposed and reference zones differ is complicated by the fact that considerable variation exists even among samples collected on the same day throughout the study area. Any apparent differences among zones may be a function of only collecting a single sample within each zone. For this reason, several components of The Academy's surveys include the collection of multiple samples from each zone.
Another type of variation which The Academy's surveys address is variation over time. As The Academy's Sabine River surveys continue, it will eventually be possible to address this issue. Currently, there are too few studies to assess trends over time or the natural variability that may occur. The present study, however, does include a comparison of the 2005 results with those from the 1982, 1987, 1995, and 2000 studies.
Project elements for the 2005 survey include:
Go to Sabine River Authority of Texas' web page on the Sabine River Basin.