Is This Coastal Prairie the Key to Houston’s Urban Future?
Positioned to be an ecology leader in Texas, the UH Coastal Center helps students, researchers and conservationists answer environmental questions with real-world impact.
Story by Sam Eifling
Photography by Anthony Gollab
Is This Coastal Prairie the Key to Houston’s Urban Future?
Positioned to be an ecology leader in Texas, the UH Coastal Center helps students, researchers and conservationists answer environmental questions with real-world impact.
Story by Sam Eifling
Photography by Anthony Gollab
The greater Houston area, Jaime González tells people, has a surfaces problem. The ground below your feet — or, just as likely, below your tires — too often cannot soak up rain. It traps heat. It doesn’t offer much beyond being smooth and wide, and even those traits become obstacles when you try to walk anywhere.
In the 20 years between 1997 and 2017, metro Houston built out nearly 400 square miles’ worth of buildings and pavement. Those impermeable surfaces, useful as they may be, disrupt the region’s ecosystems and intensify the effects of a warming climate on a vulnerable city.
In his capacity as the executive director of the University of Houston’s Institute for Ecological Resilience, González, along with researchers from UH, works with people and organizations in Houston to reimagine their neighborhoods to look more like the coastal prairie that once covered the area. He supports the creation of so-called “pocket prairies” around the city that help buffer the flooding and heat intensified by the built environment while supporting native pollinators and birds.
Jaime González
Jaime González
“We’re not just adding nature to communities to look different,” González says. “Nature is spongier. It’s cooler. It can produce healthier air and water and is better for wildlife. We’re doing it so the land behaves differently for all of us. These prairies, when you put them in the city, are significantly cooler than even turf grass.”
But then the obvious question arises: Where do you get prairies? Generations of urban and suburban development, not to mention generations of cattle ranching before that, have practically eradicated the region’s original prairie grasslands. So how do people know what interplay those grasses and plants will have with the existing environment?
Sparking Creativity Through Beauty
Around Houston, many of those answers originate at the UH Coastal Center, which is positioned to be an ecology leader in Texas. The 925-acre patch of high-quality coastal prairie offers UH scholars and their partners around the region an opportunity to conduct research, practice habitat restoration and maintenance, and envision ways in which a resilient Houston can learn from and support the environment that once thrived along the coast.
“When people see a wild ecosystem like the Coastal Center, and its expansiveness, I think it sparks creativity,” says Heidi Heim-Ballew, the research liaison officer for the UH Institute for Ecological Resilience, a multidisciplinary body that works with and at the Coastal Center. “If this can exist, what else can exist? It opens people’s minds to different possibilities and how we have a connection with nature in a much deeper way.”
The 300-plus plant species represented at the Coastal Center change with the seasons. In the winter, the dominant palette is umber and burnished copper, the colors of the chest-tall prairie grasses slumbering through the cold months. As the spring revives the greenery, flowers such as black-eyed Susans and bluebonnets peek out.
Heidi Heim-Ballew
Heidi Heim-Ballew
By the time summer arrives, the prairie patch inside the tree break is in full bloom with swaying big bluestem bunchgrass and the feathery seedheads of yellow Indian grass. One standout attraction for González is Liatris spicata, the blazing star, a tall flower with scraggly purple petals that resemble Muppet fur. Other regulars around the Coastal Center include bobcats, coyotes, Eastern meadowlarks — and researchers who love the vibrant piece of protected land.
“It’s like having an inland coral reef, because it’s just this riot of color and texture and beauty and birds and butterflies,” González says. “It really is having an intact, beautiful ecosystem right there in front of you. And it’s just stunning.”
This diversity of plant and animal life sits in La Marque, about a 45-minute drive from the main UH campus, just west of Texas City and north of West Galveston Bay. The site where the Coastal Center resides was once an Army training center called Camp Wallace. In 1960, the federal government transferred the land to UH, which established the Coastal Center in 1972. Galveston County’s 678-acre Jack Brooks Park, a mountain biking and recreational sports destination, shares some of the old Camp Wallace property.
Around Houston, many of those answers originate at the UH Coastal Center, which is positioned to be an ecology leader in Texas. The 925-acre patch of high-quality coastal prairie offers UH scholars and their partners around the region an opportunity to conduct research, practice habitat restoration and maintenance, and envision ways in which a resilient Houston can learn from and support the environment that once thrived along the coast.
“When people see a wild ecosystem like the Coastal Center, and its expansiveness, I think it sparks creativity,” says Heidi Heim-Ballew, the research liaison officer for the UH Institute for Ecological Resilience, a multidisciplinary body that works with and at the Coastal Center. “If this can exist, what else can exist? It opens people’s minds to different possibilities and how we have a connection with nature in a much deeper way.”
Heidi Heim-Ballew
Heidi Heim-Ballew
The 300-plus plant species represented at the Coastal Center change with the seasons. In the winter, the dominant palette is umber and burnished copper, the colors of the chest-tall prairie grasses slumbering through the cold months. As the spring revives the greenery, flowers such as black-eyed Susans and bluebonnets peek out.
By the time summer arrives, the prairie patch inside the tree break is in full bloom with swaying big bluestem bunchgrass and the feathery seedheads of yellow Indian grass. One standout attraction for González is Liatris spicata, the blazing star, a tall flower with scraggly purple petals that resemble Muppet fur. Other regulars around the Coastal Center include bobcats, coyotes, Eastern meadowlarks — and researchers who love the vibrant piece of protected land.
Philadelphia fleabane at the UH Coastal Center
Philadelphia fleabane at the UH Coastal Center
“It’s like having an inland coral reef, because it’s just this riot of color and texture and beauty and birds and butterflies,” González says. “It really is having an intact, beautiful ecosystem right there in front of you. And it’s just stunning.”
This diversity of plant and animal life sits in La Marque, about a 45-minute drive from the main UH campus, just west of Texas City and north of West Galveston Bay. The site where the Coastal Center resides was once an Army training center called Camp Wallace. In 1960, the federal government transferred the land to UH, which established the Coastal Center in 1972. Galveston County’s 678-acre Jack Brooks Park, a mountain biking and recreational sports destination, shares some of the old Camp Wallace property.
Spawning a Stronger, More Biodiverse Houston
Having such a substantial natural tract is rare and precious in Greater Houston. The Coastal Center’s sprawling acreage gives researchers an opportunity to run experiments that simply wouldn’t fit elsewhere. Steven Pennings, a professor in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry who ran the Coastal Center from 2010 to 2024, revels in the variety of the projects the Coastal Center supports. For example: the students who roped off 75 acres to test the effects of added calcium, sodium and potassium on the chemistry of the soil, or the researchers who set up huge pots of sandy dirt under a greenhouse roof to see how different amounts of water influence grass health.
“If you get in the middle of a 900-acre piece of undeveloped property, you lose most of the road noise and most of the noise of human activity,” Pennings says. “You’re hearing the wind, you’re hearing the bugs, you’re hearing the birds, and you’re seeing wildlife. If you want some land, you want to fly a drone, you want to set up a bunch of tanks — where are you going to do all this? The Coastal Center offers that opportunity.”
Steven Pennings
Steven Pennings
On occasion, when wind and moisture conditions align, a visitor to the Coastal Center might find a prescribed burn rolling across the grass. The fire clears away woody plants — a job that grazing bison would have done in the distant past — and incinerates dead plant debris that can choke out seedlings. Other times, you can watch a small combine mow the grasses, along the way collecting seeds. Some of those seeds will be sorted by species, while others will be bundled up as a sort of prairie starter kit for native grass.
The research and seed harvests at the Coastal Center contribute to a stronger, more biodiverse Houston. González touts the harvesting and distribution of seeds from the center’s 100-acre Aumann Prairie for helping to restore prairie grasses and plants around the city. Seeds harvested last fall are now going to urban resiliency projects in parks and along trails. As these mini prairies mature, they’ll spread to other land in the region.
“I call these mother prairies,” González says. “They’re prairies that give birth to other prairies. And there are very few left. We’re going to make sure the seeds that come out of there are either used for restoration on the property or they’re going into the community to shape these prairies.”
Having such a substantial natural tract is rare and precious in Greater Houston. The Coastal Center’s sprawling acreage gives researchers an opportunity to run experiments that simply wouldn’t fit elsewhere. Steven Pennings, a professor in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry who ran the Coastal Center from 2010 to 2024, revels in the variety of the projects the Coastal Center supports. For example: the students who roped off 75 acres to test the effects of added calcium, sodium and potassium on the chemistry of the soil, or the researchers who set up huge pots of sandy dirt under a greenhouse roof to see how different amounts of water influence grass health.
Steven Pennings
Steven Pennings
“If you get in the middle of a 900-acre piece of undeveloped property, you lose most of the road noise and most of the noise of human activity,” Pennings says. “You’re hearing the wind, you’re hearing the bugs, you’re hearing the birds, and you’re seeing wildlife. If you want some land, you want to fly a drone, you want to set up a bunch of tanks — where are you going to do all this? The Coastal Center offers that opportunity.”
On occasion, when wind and moisture conditions align, a visitor to the Coastal Center might find a prescribed burn rolling across the grass. The fire clears away woody plants — a job that grazing bison would have done in the distant past — and incinerates dead plant debris that can choke out seedlings. Other times, you can watch a small combine mow the grasses, along the way collecting seeds. Some of those seeds will be sorted by species, while others will be bundled up as a sort of prairie starter kit for native grass.
Aerial shot of researchers working on the coastal prairie at the UH Coastal Center.
Aerial shot of researchers working on the coastal prairie at the UH Coastal Center.
The research and seed harvests at the Coastal Center contribute to a stronger, more biodiverse Houston. González touts the harvesting and distribution of seeds from the center’s 100-acre Aumann Prairie for helping to restore prairie grasses and plants around the city. Seeds harvested last fall are now going to urban resiliency projects in parks and along trails. As these mini prairies mature, they’ll spread to other land in the region.
“I call these mother prairies,” González says. “They’re prairies that give birth to other prairies. And there are very few left. We’re going to make sure the seeds that come out of there are either used for restoration on the property or they’re going into the community to shape these prairies.”
Studying the Complexity of a Sprawling City
As a city defined by sheer size, Houston needs this sort of space to devote to its natural sciences. The city limits encompass 640 square miles, enough to contain Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Chicago — and still have room left for the island of Manhattan.
Studying Houston’s character requires a laboratory with room to sprawl. Its built environment allows millions of people to work and live and travel. But it also contains a mosaic of natural environments — piney woods, prairies, coastal marshes, estuaries, swamps — in proximity to the Gulf.
Significantly, the Coastal Center has the space to contain more than just prairies. Wetlands and woodlands also collide there, enabling researchers and planners to see many environments interact in microcosm.
Crucially, the wild environment of the Coastal Center gives researchers a “test bed,” in Heim-Ballew’s words, to understand how a prairie works before they plant pocket prairies around the city. That background allows scientists and planners to compare the ecology of wild prairie against that of restored prairie spaces. “It’s just a great opportunity to go back to the first principles of ecology and really understand the system,” she says. “And then use that to inform our action.”
Graduate students Dilshini Sandanika Thathsarani Herath Mudiyanselage and Collin Dice gather seeds at the UH Coastal Center.
Graduate students Dilshini Sandanika Thathsarani Herath Mudiyanselage and Collin Dice gather seeds at the UH Coastal Center.
Other institutions in the region also take advantage of the Coastal Center. On a visit you might encounter researchers from Rice University, notice the University of Texas meteorological station, or bump into students from Texas A&M University– Kingsville running a prescribed burn of the grass with the help of Texas Parks & Wildlife and local fire departments.
González points to an ongoing student project on plant memory — do plants remember what was growing around them after a fire, and does that change the ways in which things grow in that site? — as an example of the practical studies regularly taking place at the Coastal Center.
Understanding the complex interplay of those natural elements — plants, animals, insects, tides, storms and terrains — gives Houston some of the tools it needs to address flooding, heat and air quality. The Coastal Center offers a key laboratory for developing nature-based solutions.
“We would like to see it utilized for this basic research on how you rebuild ecosystems for resiliency,” González says. “That’s a growth edge for us. That’s a place where we can lean in much harder, because we have the space to do more of that research.”
As a city defined by sheer size, Houston needs this sort of space to devote to its natural sciences. The city limits encompass 640 square miles, enough to contain Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Chicago — and still have room left for the island of Manhattan.
Studying Houston’s character requires a laboratory with room to sprawl. Its built environment allows millions of people to work and live and travel. But it also contains a mosaic of natural environments — piney woods, prairies, coastal marshes, estuaries, swamps — in proximity to the Gulf.
Significantly, the Coastal Center has the space to contain more than just prairies. Wetlands and woodlands also collide there, enabling researchers and planners to see many environments interact in microcosm.
Crucially, the wild environment of the Coastal Center gives researchers a “test bed,” in Heim-Ballew’s words, to understand how a prairie works before they plant pocket prairies around the city. That background allows scientists and planners to compare the ecology of wild prairie against that of restored prairie spaces. “It’s just a great opportunity to go back to the first principles of ecology and really understand the system,” she says. “And then use that to inform our action.”
Graduate students Dilshini Sandanika Thathsarani Herath Mudiyanselage and Collin Dice gather seeds at the UH Coastal Center.
Graduate students Dilshini Sandanika Thathsarani Herath Mudiyanselage and Collin Dice gather seeds at the UH Coastal Center.
Other institutions in the region also take advantage of the Coastal Center. On a visit you might encounter researchers from Rice University, notice the University of Texas meteorological station, or bump into students from Texas A&M University– Kingsville running a prescribed burn of the grass with the help of Texas Parks & Wildlife and local fire departments.
González points to an ongoing student project on plant memory — do plants remember what was growing around them after a fire, and does that change the ways in which things grow in that site? — as an example of the practical studies regularly taking place at the Coastal Center.
Understanding the complex interplay of those natural elements — plants, animals, insects, tides, storms and terrains — gives Houston some of the tools it needs to address flooding, heat and air quality. The Coastal Center offers a key laboratory for developing nature-based solutions.
“We would like to see it utilized for this basic research on how you rebuild ecosystems for resiliency,” González says. “That’s a growth edge for us. That’s a place where we can lean in much harder, because we have the space to do more of that research.”
Nature's Allure
UH Institute for Ecological Resilience Executive Director Jaime González wants the Coastal Center to connect Houstonians to a more raw, natural past. But in doing so, he also expects the center to help people build a future that feels, perhaps unexpectedly, more human. “The research is pretty clear that people need daily doses of nature to maintain optimal health, to feel connected, even to reduce feelings of loneliness,” González says. “I always say that nature humanizes people. It makes them want to go outside and socialize with more people.” The Coastal Center lures not only students and researchers but also community members like Lisa Hardcastle from Houston Audubon, who frequents the center for bird watching and tracking.
Nature’s Allure: UH Institute for Ecological Resilience Executive Director Jaime González wants the Coastal Center to connect Houstonians to a more raw, natural past. But in doing so, he also expects the center to help people build a future that feels, perhaps unexpectedly, more human. “The research is pretty clear that people need daily doses of nature to maintain optimal health, to feel connected, even to reduce feelings of loneliness,” González says. “I always say that nature humanizes people. It makes them want to go outside and socialize with more people.” The Coastal Center lures not only students and researchers but also community members like Lisa Hardcastle from Houston Audubon, who frequents the center for bird watching and tracking.
Nature’s Allure: UH Institute for Ecological Resilience Executive Director Jaime González wants the Coastal Center to connect Houstonians to a more raw, natural past. But in doing so, he also expects the center to help people build a future that feels, perhaps unexpectedly, more human. “The research is pretty clear that people need daily doses of nature to maintain optimal health, to feel connected, even to reduce feelings of loneliness,” González says. “I always say that nature humanizes people. It makes them want to go outside and socialize with more people.” The Coastal Center lures not only students and researchers but also community members like Lisa Hardcastle from Houston Audubon, who frequents the center for bird watching and tracking.
Planning for Resiliency
Houston is at the nexus of multiple climate and ecology problems in search of 21st-century solutions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration counts 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, which dumped 30-plus inches of rain around Houston and caused $125 billion in damage overall, as the second-most expensive hurricane in U.S. history, behind only Katrina. In 2021, Winter Storm Uri clobbered Texas and didn’t spare Harris County, where 90% of residents lost power and two-thirds lost running water for days.
The increasingly frequent extreme storms are playing out across a backdrop of slow, steady climate threats. Summer temperatures in Houston have risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, threatening public health and basic human comfort. And invasive species such as Triadica sebifera (known colloquially as Chinese tallow), a non-native plant that now accounts for about one-quarter of all trees in the Houston area, are disrupting the natural ecosystem that the city depends on to mitigate extreme weather.
It’s folly to think the Coastal Center alone can blunt a hurricane or a changing climate. But the lessons and resources that researchers derive from the collision of plants, soils and wildlife can inform how the city builds with these larger concerns in mind. Easing the heat, controlling flooding, improving the air, making the city’s land hospitable to native species — these all work to make the city more resilient.
The Coastal Center alone can’t blunt a hurricane or a changing climate. But the lessons and resources that researchers derive from the collision of plants, soils and wildlife can inform how the city builds with these larger concerns in mind.
“It really does create an opportunity to better understand the ecosystem,” Heim-Ballew says. “But also how we can leverage that knowledge to be impactful in the community, especially in urban settings where there are things like flooding and heat that cause so many challenges for folks.”
Heim-Ballew says she and González are welcoming a wide range of proposals — beyond academia — so locals can bring their ideas to the Coastal Center and participate in projects they can ultimately own. “That’s something we’re trying to facilitate,” she says. “And not just for community organizations, but for community members.”
Because the virgin prairie embodies the natural history of so much of the region, its benefits can extend to today’s urban, suburban and rural areas alike. People arriving at the Coastal Center from downtown Houston may be looking for a certain kind of community solution, while people coming from sprawling suburban communities could be seeking something quite different.
As people use the Coastal Center to gain insights into and training on these nature-based solutions, they will discover what their own community can best tap into.
To an extent, the Coastal Center offers solutions simply by existing. Wild spaces have a way of seeping into the imagination of a city, beyond simply supporting birds and seed harvests.
Greening Home Landscaping proprietor Eric Ishimwe and Friend of Columbia Tap, plants seeds harvested from UH Coastal Center along Columbia Tap Trail greenway in Houston.
Greening Home Landscaping proprietor Eric Ishimwe and Friend of Columbia Tap, plants seeds harvested from UH Coastal Center along Columbia Tap Trail greenway in Houston.
Undergrads today lead very different lives from those of their grandparents 50 years ago. Pennings imagines how much more access to the outdoors the farmers and ranchers of yesteryear enjoyed. Those environments may not have been pristine, but they were at least semi-wild.
“You probably had a pond where you’d fish and catch frogs and see bugs,” he says. “And a 20-year-old today may have none of that. I teach introductory ecology, and a big percentage of the students have no idea when I talk about a grassland or a forest or a sandy beach or a rocky intertidal or any kind of natural habitat. They have no personal connection to that.”
The Coastal Center is a place where UH students can literally touch grass. Prairie stewardship is only one dimension of the lessons it offers. Humming in the background, amid the workforce training and air-quality research and soil experiments, is an even more fundamental project: a living reminder that no matter what the city builds, it must consider the effects — and the enormous benefits — of living in tandem with natural environments.
“That is applicable to urban and suburban and rural places,” González says. “That cuts across divides. It’s literally our common ground.”
Houston is at the nexus of multiple climate and ecology problems in search of 21st-century solutions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration counts 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, which dumped 30-plus inches of rain around Houston and caused $125 billion in damage overall, as the second-most expensive hurricane in U.S. history, behind only Katrina. In 2021, Winter Storm Uri clobbered Texas and didn’t spare Harris County, where 90% of residents lost power and two-thirds lost running water for days.
The increasingly frequent extreme storms are playing out across a backdrop of slow, steady climate threats. Summer temperatures in Houston have risen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, threatening public health and basic human comfort. And invasive species such as Triadica sebifera (known colloquially as Chinese tallow), a non-native plant that now accounts for about one-quarter of all trees in the Houston area, are disrupting the natural ecosystem that the city depends on to mitigate extreme weather.
It’s folly to think the Coastal Center alone can blunt a hurricane or a changing climate. But the lessons and resources that researchers derive from the collision of plants, soils and wildlife can inform how the city builds with these larger concerns in mind. Easing the heat, controlling flooding, improving the air, making the city’s land hospitable to native species — these all work to make the city more resilient.
The Coastal Center alone can’t blunt a hurricane or a changing climate. But the lessons and resources that researchers derive from the collision of plants, soils and wildlife can inform how the city builds with these larger concerns in mind.
“It really does create an opportunity to better understand the ecosystem,” Heim-Ballew says. “But also how we can leverage that knowledge to be impactful in the community, especially in urban settings where there are things like flooding and heat that cause so many challenges for folks.”
Heim-Ballew says she and González are welcoming a wide range of proposals — beyond academia — so locals can bring their ideas to the Coastal Center and participate in projects they can ultimately own. “That’s something we’re trying to facilitate,” she says. “And not just for community organizations, but for community members.”
Because the virgin prairie embodies the natural history of so much of the region, its benefits can extend to today’s urban, suburban and rural areas alike. People arriving at the Coastal Center from downtown Houston may be looking for a certain kind of community solution, while people coming from sprawling suburban communities could be seeking something quite different.
As people use the Coastal Center to gain insights into and training on these nature-based solutions, they will discover what their own community can best tap into.
To an extent, the Coastal Center offers solutions simply by existing. Wild spaces have a way of seeping into the imagination of a city, beyond simply supporting birds and seed harvests.
Greening Home Landscaping proprietor Eric Ishimwe and Friend of Columbia Tap, plants seeds harvested from UH Coastal Center along Columbia Tap Trail greenway in Houston.
Greening Home Landscaping proprietor Eric Ishimwe and Friend of Columbia Tap, plants seeds harvested from UH Coastal Center along Columbia Tap Trail greenway in Houston.
Undergrads today lead very different lives from those of their grandparents 50 years ago. Pennings imagines how much more access to the outdoors the farmers and ranchers of yesteryear enjoyed. Those environments may not have been pristine, but they were at least semi-wild.
“You probably had a pond where you’d fish and catch frogs and see bugs,” he says. “And a 20-year-old today may have none of that. I teach introductory ecology, and a big percentage of the students have no idea when I talk about a grassland or a forest or a sandy beach or a rocky intertidal or any kind of natural habitat. They have no personal connection to that.”
The Coastal Center is a place where UH students can literally touch grass. Prairie stewardship is only one dimension of the lessons it offers. Humming in the background, amid the workforce training and air-quality research and soil experiments, is an even more fundamental project: a living reminder that no matter what the city builds, it must consider the effects — and the enormous benefits — of living in tandem with natural environments.
“That is applicable to urban and suburban and rural places,” González says. “That cuts across divides. It’s literally our common ground.”
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