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Shell Keys National Wildlife Refuge
Shell Keys National Wildlife Refuge is located in the offshore waters to the west of the Atchafalaya River Delta, south of Marsh Island Wildlife Management Area. It was established in 1907 and is one of the oldest refuges in the National Wildlife Refuge System. Southwest Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex The Southwest Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex was formed by administratively combining the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge, East Cove National Wildlife Refuge, Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge, and the ''Shell Keys NWR'' in 2004. Boundary Due to coastal erosion, the refuge boundary is not well defined. It has been described as "... a small group of unsurveyed islets located in the Gulf of Mexico about three and one half miles south of Marsh Island (Louisiana), and approximately at latitude 29 degrees 26 minutes north, longitude 91 degrees 51 minutes west from Greenwich..." The boundary of the refuge has been interpr ...
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Iberia Parish, Louisiana
Iberia Parish (french: Paroisse de l'Ibérie, es, Parroquia de Iberia) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 69,929; the parish seat is New Iberia. The parish was formed in 1868 during the Reconstruction era and named for the Iberian Peninsula. It is part of the 22-parish Acadiana region of the state, with a large Francophone population. Some of its ethnic French residents had ancestors who settled here after being expelled in the 18th century by the British from Acadia in present-day Canada. Historically, it has also been a center for sugar cane cultivation and produces the most sugar of any parish in the state. Iberia Parish is part of the Lafayette metropolitan area. The Port of Iberia has a waterway with access to the Gulf Coast. History Iberia Parish was created from parts of St. Martin Parish and St. Mary Parish in 1868. It was part of an effort by the Reconstruction-era government to create parishes in whi ...
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Gulf Of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southwest and south by the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo; and on the southeast by Cuba. The Southern U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, which border the Gulf on the north, are often referred to as the " Third Coast" of the United States (in addition to its Atlantic and Pacific coasts). The Gulf of Mexico took shape approximately 300 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics.Huerta, A.D., and D.L. Harry (2012) ''Wilson cycles, tectonic inheritance, and rifting of the North American Gulf of Mexico continental margin.'' Geosphere. 8(1):GES00725.1, first published on March 6, 2012, The Gulf of Mexico basin is roughly ov ...
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Protected Areas Of Iberia Parish, Louisiana
Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although the mechanisms for providing protection vary widely, the basic meaning of the term remains the same. This is illustrated by an explanation found in a manual on electrical wiring: Some kind of protection is a characteristic of all life, as living things have evolved at least some protective mechanisms to counter damaging environmental phenomena, such as ultraviolet light. Biological membranes such as bark on trees and skin on animals offer protection from various threats, with skin playing a key role in protecting organisms against pathogens and excessive water loss. Additional structures like scales and hair offer further protection from the elements and from predators, with some animals having features such as spines or camouflage servin ...
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Louisiana
Louisiana (french: link=no, Louisiane ; es, link=no, Luisiana ; lou, Lwizyàn) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 20th in land area and the 25th in population, with roughly 4.6 million residents. Reflecting its French heritage, Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties, making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties (the other being Alaska and its boroughs). Baton Rouge is the state's capital, and New Orleans, a French Louisiana region, is its largest city with a population of about 383,000 people. Louisiana has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the south; a large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana's lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leavin ...
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Brown Pelican
The brown pelican (''Pelecanus occidentalis'') is a bird of the pelican family, Pelecanidae, one of three species found in the Americas and one of two that feed by diving into water. It is found on the Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to the mouth of the Amazon River, and along the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to northern Chile, including the Galapagos Islands. The nominate subspecies in its breeding plumage has a white head with a yellowish wash on the crown. The nape and neck are dark maroon–brown. The upper sides of the neck have white lines along the base of the gular pouch, and the lower fore neck has a pale yellowish patch. The male and female are similar, but the female is slightly smaller. The nonbreeding adult has a white head and neck. The pink skin around the eyes becomes dull and gray in the nonbreeding season. It lacks any red hue, and the pouch is strongly olivaceous ochre-tinged and the legs are olivaceous gray to blackish-gray. The brown pelican ...
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American White Pelican
The American white pelican (''Pelecanus erythrorhynchos'') is a large aquatic soaring bird from the order Pelecaniformes. It breeds in interior North America, moving south and to the coasts, as far as Central America and South America, in winter. Taxonomy The American white pelican was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's ''Systema Naturae''. He placed it with the other pelicans in the genus '' Pelecanus'' and coined the binomial name ''Pelecanus erythrorhynchos''. Gmelin based his description on the "rough-billed pelican" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham. Latham had access to three specimens that had been brought to London from New York and the Hudson Bay area of North America. The scientific name means "red-billed pelican", from the Latin term for a pelican, ''Pelecanus'', and ''erythrorhynchos'', derived from the Ancient Greek words ( ἐ ...
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Laughing Gull
The laughing gull (''Leucophaeus atricilla'') is a medium-sized gull of North and South America. Named for its laugh-like call, it is an opportunistic omnivore and scavenger. It breeds in large colonies mostly along the Atlantic coast of North America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. The two subspecies are: ''L. a. megalopterus'' – which can be seen from southeast Canada down to Central America, and ''L. a. atricilla'' which appears from the West Indies to the Venezuelan islands. The laughing gull was long placed in the genus '' Larus'' until its present placement in ''Leucophaeus'', which follows the American Ornithologists' Union. Name The genus name ''Leucophaeus'' is from Ancient Greek λευκός : ''leukós'', "white", and φαιός : ''phaios'', "dusky". The specific ''atricilla'' is from Latin ''atra'', "black", " unlucky" or "malevolent" and ''cilla'', "tail". According to the ''Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names'', Linnaeus may have intended to ...
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Black Skimmer
The black skimmer (''Rynchops niger'') is a tern-like seabird, one of three similar birds species in the skimmer genus ''Rynchops'' in the gull family Laridae. It breeds in North and South America. Northern populations winter in the warmer waters of the Caribbean and the tropical and subtropical Pacific coasts, but the South American races make only shorter movements in response to annual floods which extend their feeding areas in the river shallows. Taxonomy The black skimmer was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1755 in the tenth edition of his ''Systema Naturae'' and given the binomial name ''Rynchops niger''. The genus name ''Rynchops'' is from the Ancient Greek ῥυγχος/''rhunkhos'' meaning "bill" and κοπτω/''koptō'' meaning "to cut off". The specific ''niger'' is the Latin word for "black". The black skimmer is one of three species in the genus ''Rynchops''. There are three subspecies: *''R. n. niger'' ( Linnaeus, 1758) – migratory ...
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Sandwich Tern
The Sandwich tern (''Thalasseus sandvicensis'') is a tern in the family Laridae. It is very closely related to the lesser crested tern (''T. bengalensis''), Chinese crested tern (''T. bernsteini''), Cabot's tern (''T. acuflavidus''), and elegant tern (''T. elegans'') and has been known to interbreed with the lesser crested. It breeds in the Palearctic from Europe to the Caspian Sea wintering to South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. The Sandwich tern is a medium-large tern with grey upperparts, white underparts, a yellow-tipped black bill and a shaggy black crest which becomes less extensive in winter with a white crown. Young birds bear grey and brown scalloped plumage on their backs and wings. It is a vocal bird. It nests in a ground scrape and lays one to three eggs. Like all ''Thalasseus'' terns, the Sandwich tern feeds by plunge diving for fish, usually in marine environments, and the offering of fish by the male to the female is part of the courtship display. Taxonomy Th ...
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Royal Tern
The royal tern (''Thalasseus maximus'') is a tern in the family Laridae. The species is endemic to the Americas, though strays have been identified in Europe.Buckley, P. A. and F. G. Buckley (2020). Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.royter1.01 Retrieved April 17, 2021 Taxonomy The royal tern was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his ''Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux'' from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the ''Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle'' which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial ...
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Marsh Island (Louisiana)
Marsh Island (french: Grosse-Île-du-Vermillion) is an island off the coast of southern Louisiana in the United States. Overview Marsh Island is an uninhabited low-lying marshy island in Iberia Parish, south coastal Louisiana, lying between Vermilion Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It is bordered on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and is separated from mainland Louisiana by East Cote Blanche Bay to its east, West Cote Blanche Bay to its north, Vermilion Bay to its northwest, and Southwest Pass to its west.''Webster's New Geographical Dictionary'', 1984, pp. 690, 734. Vegetation is primarily of the marshy types, and the island is almost treeless. On the island is the Marsh Island Wildlife Refuge, a wild bird sanctuary for species such as the snow goose. Other animals which inhabit the island include alligators, ducks and other waterfowl, crabs, and shrimp. The island is popular for recreational fishing Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing ...
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Coastal Erosion
Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms. The landward retreat of the shoreline can be measured and described over a temporal scale of tides, seasons, and other short-term cyclic processes. Coastal erosion may be caused by hydraulic action, abrasion, impact and corrosion by wind and water, and other forces, natural or unnatural. On non-rocky coasts, coastal erosion results in rock formations in areas where the coastline contains rock layers or fracture zones with varying resistance to erosion. Softer areas become eroded much faster than harder ones, which typically result in landforms such as tunnels, bridges, columns, and pillars. Over time the coast generally evens out. The softer areas fill up with sediment eroded from hard areas, and rock formations are eroded away. Also erosion co ...
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