top of page
AF1QipMRJXXCcURrkkdbUWEy_Khkv0b5MC_mXywVkW8o=s1600-k-no.webp

Months into Years: Hindcasting Water Levels in Texas

Hohonu’s hindcasting model turns short-term deployments into years of historical insight — strengthening permitting, planning, and conservation decisions anywhere water levels matter.

The combination of real-time measurements and Hohonu's hindcasting model gave us the defensible evidence we needed for our restoration plan — and a framework we can apply to wetlands across the Texas coast.​

​

- Technical Lead, ERGIS

The Story

Tres Palacios partners were seeking site-specific data to understand how degraded historical channels and runnels were limiting drainage and affecting marsh vegetation. Restoring those features required first understanding how current water levels influenced inundation extent and duration.

With Hohonu’s hindcasting capability, a few months of sensor data were extended into years of historical context. By aligning with NOAA standards and providing localized resolution, stakeholders gained defensible evidence to inform restoration design and meet regulatory requirements.

3 Months

Deployed

2 Years

Hindcasted

70

Threshold Events Identified

Problem

  • Marsh vegetation was being negatively impacted by poor drainage due to degraded flow capacity of historical channels and runnels.

  • Needed to evaluate how current water levels affected inundation extent and duration to guide restoration.

  • Required empirical data to design a restoration plan and satisfy permit application requirements with defensible, quantitative evidence.

Stakeholders

  • Ed Rachal Foundation (ERF)

    • Landowner and project funder, supporting habitat restoration efforts.

  • ERGIS

    • Technical consulting lead, responsible for water-level analysis and reporting

  • Regulatory Agencies

    • ​Reviewing permit applications, requiring empirical water-level evidence for compliance.

Outcomes

  • Empirical validation

    • ​Hohonu data aligned closely with NOAA benchmarks while capturing finer local detail.

  • Hindcasting insights

    • ​Identified 70 water-level exceedance events and durations

  • Restoration support

    • Provided defensible evidence to guide restoration design of marsh channels and runnels, improving drainage and vegetation resilience.

  • Scalable model

    • Approach can be replicated in other Texas bays or Gulf Coast wetlands facing similar conservation/regulatory challenges.

Solution

  • Deployed a Hohonu water level sensor in Tres Palacios Bay for several months.

  • Delivered a hindcasting analysis comparing site data with NOAA’s Port O’Connor gauge.

  • Produced threshold exceedance reporting (e.g., events above/below NAVD88 reference points, including culvert-drainage thresholds).

  • Shared outputs with stakeholders in clear, regulatory-ready formats (spreadsheets, visualizations, exceedance tables, and heatmaps).

bottom of page