Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fishery-independent monitoring program bay trawl and bag seine surveys, Texas, 1982-2020

The Texas coast climatic gradient of decreasing precipitation and freshwater inflow from northeast to southwest shapes estuarine ecosystems and biodiversity. By employing broad-scale diversity and community structure metrics and habitat suitability models of key indicator species, this study explored how multiple abiotic environmental factors, freshwater inflows, and drought and flood events shape estuarine communities across different spatial and temporal scales. A long-term fishery-independent data set captured the latitudinal, seasonal, and interannual range of environmental conditions, providing insights into the general patterns and trends across different ecosystems and demonstrating how freshwater inflow regimes affect estuarine nekton communities. These spatial patterns indicate that resource managers may be well-served to incorporate community dynamics and hydrological regimes when developing adaptive management plans to maintain freshwater inflow and target salinities for important fisheries species and estuarine communities to produce a sound ecological environment. The original dataset (first version) published on 2023-03-29 is located in the folder: Seine_Surveys_Nueces_1987-2016_Version_1_Published_2023-03-29. Two data files were added to the dataset and the second version is located in the folder: Seine_Surveys_Nueces_1987-2016_Version_2_Updated__2023-11-08.