Photograph of a a pump jack and oil storage containers on display in Spindletop Park in Beaumont, TX.

Aerial view of the swamplands covering the site of Spindletop in Beaumont, TX as seen from above Spindletop Park located off of West Port Arthur Road/Spur 93.

Aerial view of the swamplands covering the site of Spindletop in Beaumont, TX as seen from above Spindletop Park located off of West Port Arthur Road/Spur 93.

Aerial view of the swamplands covering the site of Spindletop in Beaumont, TX as seen from above Spindletop Park located off of West Port Arthur Road/Spur 93. Video footage is silent.

This research project focuses on using a multiproxy approach to discriminate between overwash and non-hurricane marsh sediments within the bed of a coastal lake. 3 marsh cores were collected in an area of McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge just south of Clam Lake that are known to contain 4 hurricane overwash deposits, Ike, Rita, Carla, and Audrey. LOI and XRF analysis were used to determine the signature of the hurricane overwash layers. 3 more cores were collected from Clam Lake where there are no visible sand layers. The elemental signature of the overwash layers found in the marsh cores was used to run a hierarchical cluster analysis on the lake cores. This was able to determine the effectiveness of XRF's ability to distinguish between hurricane overwash and marsh sediments. The combination of cluster analysis, LOI, and XRF can tentatively identify hurricane overwash deposits in a coastal lake, however, it is more successful in the marsh cores. Results in the lake cores are somewhat inconsistent and uncertain, possibly because there may have not been enough overwash deposits to identity or that the XRF analysis needs more distinct sand layers to distinguish between overwash and marsh.