Coastal Bays Shorebirds

The Sensitive Shorebird Areas dataset was developed to show all locations in the Maryland Coastal Bays that are sensitive for shorebirds. The dataset is an subset of the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) dataset. The polygons that were extracted from the NWI dataset were of the NWI_TYPE = E1UB4L and E2FLN. These wetland types represent specific types of subtidal and intertidal mud flats that are desireable to shorebirds. The polygons were further divided into four size classes each containing the same number of polygons. Larger areas were given a higher ranking than smaller areas.