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Sand Lines for the Undeveloped Areas of New Jersey's Barrier Islands, Extracted from Orthoimagery, March 9, 1991, to July 30, 2013

Metadata Updated: December 11, 2025

Assessing the physical change to shorelines and wetlands is critical in determining the resiliency of wetland systems that protect adjacent habitat and communities. The wetland and back-barrier shorelines of New Jersey changed as a result of wave action and storm surge that occurred during Hurricane Sandy, which made landfall on October 29, 2012. The impact of Hurricane Sandy will be assessed and placed in its historical context to understand the future vulnerability of wetland systems. Making these assessments will rely on data extracted from current and historical resources such as maps, aerial photographs, satellite imagery, and lidar elevation data, which document physical changes over time. This USGS Data Series publication includes several open-ocean shorelines, back-island shorelines, back-island shoreline points, sand area polygons, and sand lines for the undeveloped areas of New Jersey that were extracted from orthoimagery (ortho aerial photography) dated from March 9, 1991 to July 30, 2013. This data-set consists of lines that comprise the inland extent of the main body of sand (beach/dune/overwash area) found in the orthoimagery taken on the date specified in the filename and in the "Date_" field in the feature attribute table. They are based on the sand area polygons, nj_sandpo_.shp, that are included in this Data Series publication and can be accessed via the Data Download page. Orthoimagery of New Jersey were acquired in digital format from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and New Jersey Geographic Information Network (NJGIN). The following list provides additional details about the orthoimagery used. The sand lines are organized by area with all dates for each area compiled into one data-set (shapefile) named nj_sandln_<range of dates><area name>.shp. The orthoimage date for each line is included in the shapefile attribute table "Date" field. Date Type Source Resolution 19910309-19910313 Pan USGS, DOQQ 1 m (meter) 19950325-19950407 CIR USGS, DOQQ 1 m 20020218-20020411 CIR NJGIN 1 m 20060805-20060613 Natural USDA, NAIP 1 m 20070318-20070415 Natural NJGIN 1 m 20080808-20080826 Natural USDA, NAIP 1 m 20100703-20100726 Natural USDA, NAIP 1 m 20120314-20120416 RGBI NJGIN 1 m 20130707-20130730 Natural USDA, NAIP 1 m Pan - Panchromatic (1 band, gray scale) CIR - Color Infrared (infrared, red, green) Natural - Natural Color (red, green, blue) RGBI - Natural Color and Infrared (red, green, blue, and infrared) DOQQ - Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quads NAIP - National Agriculture Imagery Program *Resampled from 1-foot resolution imagery then smoothed using a 3 m by 3 m focal mean.

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 September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date December 11, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date December 11, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-f9f93cc6-bd67-4ce7-b403-c16733a53964
Data Last Modified 2020-10-13T00:00:00Z
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://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-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 1d524dd2-fec7-4263-9e8c-dcbc7d42a1e8
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 1982de51068193ec06d0566514d1c52ea95d2b9b463f089329f539ea22ac11bf
Source Schema Version 1.1

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