U.S. Fish & Wildlife ServiceThe Texas Coastal Bend LCD includes at least parts of four of the seven major estuary systems of the Texas Gulf Coast stretching from Corpus Christie to Galveston Bay . Matagorda, Aransas, Corpus Christi, and Upper Laguna Madre are shallow and biologically productive estuaries. Although connected, the estuaries are biogeographically distinct and increase in salinity from north to south. The Laguna Madre is unusual in being only one of five hypersaline lagoon systems in the world and the only such system in North America. The Coastal Bend is bounded on its eastern edge by a series of barrier islands, including the world's longest - Padre Island. The area included in the Texas Coastal Bend LCD includes parts of 12 counties: Matagorda, Aransas, Wharton, Jackson, Victoria, Calhoun, Refugio, San Patricio, Nueces, Goliad, and Bee. Predominant estuarine and island habitats within the Texas Coastal Bend LCD area include: Open Bay, Hard Substrates (jetties, groins, etc.), Oyster Reefs, Seagrass Meadows, Coastal Marshes, Tidal Flats, Barrier Islands, and Gulf Beaches. The Open Bay and Seagrass Meadow habitats have the largest number of species. Oyster Reefs also have many associated species. The LCD area is at the crossroads of species from east and west, as well as from north and south. Rappole and Blacklock (1985) note this area of Texas has the richest bird diversity in North America north of the tropics. The great diversity of species encountered in the area is also due to the wide array of land and aquatic habitat types: arid chaparral, lush riparian forests, oak savannas, oxbow lakes and swales, river deltas, coastal marshes and ponds, oyster reefs, open bay bottoms, barrier islands, jetties and other hard substrates, and sandy beaches. For more information on this project, please visit: https://ecos.fws.gov/ ServCat /Reference/Profile/130943ArcGIS FeatureLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/fe197ea087fb49ea9b4f2be6cfaefb6c_0engU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open DataPublicFWS R2 NWRS Texas Coastal Bend LCD boundary [United States]Web servicesUnited StatesLast Modified: 2021-03-24