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Baseline for the coastal region south of Boston, Massachusetts, generated to calculate shoreline change rates using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System version 5.1

Metadata Updated: July 21, 2024

The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management launched the Shoreline Change Project in 1989 to identify erosion-prone areas of the coast by compiling a database of historical (mid 1800's-1989) shoreline positions. Trends of shoreline position over long and short-term timescales provide information to landowners, managers, and potential buyers about possible future impacts to coastal resources and infrastructure. In 2001, a 1994 shoreline was added to calculate both long- and short-term shoreline change rates along ocean-facing sections of the Massachusetts coast. In 2013, two oceanfront shorelines for Massachusetts were added using 2008-2009 color aerial orthoimagery and 2007 topographic lidar datasets obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ocean Service (NOAA), Coastal Services Center. In 2018, two new mean high water (MHW) shorelines for the Massachusetts coast extracted from lidar data between 2010-2014 were added to the dataset. This 2021 data release includes rates that incorporate one new shoreline from lidar data extracted in 2018 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX), added to the existing database of all historical shorelines (1844-2014), for the North Shore, South Shore, Cape Cod Bay, Outer Cape, Buzzard’s Bay, South Cape, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. 2018 lidar data did not cover the Boston or Elizabeth Islands regions. Included in this data release is a proxy-datum bias reference line that accounts for the positional difference in a proxy shoreline (the High Water Line shoreline) and a datum shoreline (the Mean High Water shoreline). This issue is explained further in Ruggiero and List (2009) and in the process steps of the metadata associated with the rates. This release includes both long-term (~150+ years) and short term (~30 years) rates. Files associated with the long-term rates have “LT” in their names, files associated with short-term rates have "ST” in their names.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 21, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 21, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/ecf7f25b4830e5fd795a3213bc06ecb3
Identifier USGS:610a9f50d34ef8d70568931d
Data Last Modified 20240319
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 68adc627-2983-48eb-8182-4b18e74b7918
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -70.9258,41.7784,-70.4938,42.3104
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash a27fc5346faccdc50ed6ae3dd9e268035221ce801c1542a442e1a6bd91547068
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -70.9258, 41.7784, -70.9258, 42.3104, -70.4938, 42.3104, -70.4938, 41.7784, -70.9258, 41.7784}

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