Historical shoreline changes in the vicinity of the Colorado River mouth 

 indicate a predominant net southwestward movement of littoral material. 

 Infrequent movement of littoral materials has been observed in the 

 northeasterly direction and is considered of little significance. The Matagorda 

 Peninsula shoreline surrounding the mouth of the Colorado River is composed 

 of terrigenous sand, shell, and rock fragments derived from Pleistocene and 

 Holocene deposits that were eroded from the upland areas along the Colorado 

 River and from the eastern shoreface (McGowen and Brewton 1975). 



Scope of Report 



This report provides an overview of the monitoring effort of the Corps 

 project at the mouth of the Colorado River, TX. It includes background 

 information, objectives of the study, the data collection plans and procedures, 

 data analysis, an evaluation of the project, and conclusions and 

 recommendations. The purpose of this report is to synopsize the study, present 

 the collected data, and state important conclusions for the general-interest 

 reader. Chapter 1 of this report is the introduction. Chapter 2 is the history of 

 the area, and planning, design, construction, and operation of the project. 

 Chapter 3 lists the objectives of the study and describes the monitoring plan 

 that evolved in an attempt to address both site-specific and general issues. 

 Chapter 4 presents the monitoring analyses and results. Chapter 5 discusses the 

 calculation of a long-shore sediment transport rate by various methods. 

 Chapter 6 evaluates the project design using several hypotheses which were 

 tested by this snidy. Chapter 7 recommends future maintenance efforts at the 

 site. The appendices give the MCCP project objectives, several tables of wave 

 and sediment transport data, and lessons learned during the data collection 

 experiments. 



Chapter 1 Introduction 



