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Long-term and short-term shoreline change rates for the coastal region around Boston, Massachusetts, calculated with and without the proxy-datum bias 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 and support local land-use decisions. 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 NOAA's Ocean Service, 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 extracted from 2018 lidar data collected 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 (like a High Water Line shoreline) and a datum shoreline (like a 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/789fb2da028b1ef7da74300447a5c7f9
Identifier USGS:61081503d34ef8d70565b3fb
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 dd4501af-3d45-4586-a64a-164d46ab8c84
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -71.052311,42.247342,-70.8714438,42.343509
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 07c9022b988855263377fdf392f722fbf58c52e947a88f2c146746138d62fcad
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -71.052311, 42.247342, -71.052311, 42.343509, -70.8714438, 42.343509, -70.8714438, 42.247342, -71.052311, 42.247342}

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