Texas spans a vast area in the south-central United States and borders New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. To the southeast, it meets the Gulf of Mexico. This position makes Texas both a border state and a coastal state, with major overland and maritime trade routes.
The state’s physical geography changes dramatically from east to west. East Texas includes pine forests and humid lowlands that connect ecologically to the American South. Central Texas features rolling prairies, limestone hills, springs, and river valleys, especially in the Hill Country and the Balcones Escarpment region. North Texas includes prairie and cross-timbers landscapes, while the Panhandle is part of the High Plains.
West Texas is much drier and more rugged, with basins, mesas, and mountain ranges associated with the Chihuahuan Desert and Basin and Range topography. The Trans-Pecos region includes dramatic landscapes such as the Guadalupe Mountains, Davis Mountains, and Big Bend along the Rio Grande. South Texas contains brush country and fertile river valleys, while the Gulf Coast includes bays, estuaries, barrier islands, marshes, and coastal plains.
Major rivers include the Rio Grande, Red River, Brazos, Colorado, Trinity, Sabine, and Pecos. Texas has extensive groundwater resources, including portions of the Edwards Aquifer and the Ogallala Aquifer. Natural resources include oil, natural gas, wind, solar potential, lignite, agricultural land, timber, and fisheries. Geologically, Texas contains coastal sedimentary basins, limestone uplands, volcanic remnants in parts of the west, and some of the most productive hydrocarbon formations in North America.
