English Language Arts: Reading Fluency (TEKS.ELA.9-12.3) Practice Test

Across the Southern High Plains, ephemeral playas function as intermittent engines of recharge rather than picturesque ponds. During high-intensity storms, these shallow basins concentrate runoff, forcing water through fine-grained sediments that, despite low permeability, crack seasonally and create preferential flow paths. Our three-year study of sixteen playas in the Texas Panhandle combined time-lapse resistivity imaging with chloride mass balance modeling to estimate episodic infiltration. Results complicate the common assumption that playas merely evaporate collected rainfall. In years with clustered storm events, net infiltration exceeded basin storage by an order of magnitude, suggesting lateral subsurface connectivity to adjacent unsaturated zones. However, recharge contributions were spatially heterogeneous, governed by antecedent moisture, land-use disturbance, and clay swelling dynamics. Consequently, management prescriptions that fill or plow basins in pursuit of short-term agricultural gain may curtail aquifer resilience during decadal drought. We recommend a policy framework that treats playas as infrastructure: preserve intact basin morphology, minimize sediment infilling from surrounding fields, and incentivize vegetative buffers that stabilize banks while not impeding focused flow. Because measured uncertainty remained high, especially under prolonged heat, decision-makers should interpret point estimates cautiously and prioritize adaptive monitoring over static allocations. Further replication across seasons will refine regional recharge budgets significantly.

By dusk the stairwell smelled of iron and rain, and the old radiator clicked like a metronome refusing to keep time. Mara folded the letter along its creases—first written, she thought, on a morning that had never arrived—and placed it on the sill where paint blistered into continents. The hallway hummed with neighbors rehearsing apologies through doors; the city, for once, seemed to breathe in before speaking. It would be easy to say that she left because the rent rose or the train relocated the horizon, but the truth rearranged itself each time she bent toward it, as if memory were a flock that lifted suddenly, leaving only the shadow of wings. The kettle shrieked; she did not move. Somewhere below, a child practiced a scale that refused to resolve. She traced the letter's watermark with her fingernail and waited for the sentence that would decide her, certain it had been written in the margins where the ink turned light, where instructions hid between the strokes. The radiator finally fell silent. The note remained a rectangle of quiet weather. In that pause Mara saw the rooms she had not chosen open and close like tidepools, breathing her name. At last.