This product comprises over 75,000 nautical miles of coastline (nearly 2.5 million vertices), representing the entire conterminous United States of America. Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and all other interests and territories of the United States are not included in the collection.
The data set is designed for a broad target audience ranging from governmental agencies, universities and other research institutions, to the private sector, and students, as well as any other concern requiring a general purpose digital shoreline layer for GIS and cartographic projects.
Source data from charts published using the North American Datums of 1902, 1927, and 1983. 1902 and 1927 referenced data was converted to 1983 via NOAA, National Geodetic Survey Software NADCON, version 2.1.
Public domain data from the U.S. Government are freely redistributable with proper metadata and source attribution.
The Medium Resolution Shoreline incorporates the entire contiguous United States coastline as four major regions. These include: the Atlantic Coast, ranging from the United States-Canada Border at the St. Croix River to Florida Bay and the Florida Keys; the Gulf of Mexico Region, extending from northwest of the Keys to the United States-Mexico Border at the Rio Grande; the Pacific Coast Region, extending from the United States-Mexico Border at Baja to the United States-Canada Border along the Straits of Juan de Fuca; and the Great Lakes Region, which includes all of the lakes in their entirety, and the St. Lawrence River Seaway to Ogdensburg, NY. Alaska, the Hawaiian Island Archipelago, Puerto Rico, or any other U. S. interests which are not a part of the coterminous United States are not included in the collection.
NOAA's Medium Resolution Digital Vector Shoreline is a high-quality, Geographic Information System-ready, general-use digital vector data set created by the Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) Division of NOAA's Office of Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment. Compiled from hundreds of NOAA coast charts, this product comprises over 75,000 nautical miles of coastline (nearly 2.5 million vertices), representing the entire coterminous United States of America. Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and all other interests and territories of the United States are not included in the collection.
The previously digitized medium resolution coastlines were combined to create a polygon representation of the 48 contiguous United States.
A complete description of the process steps is available in the Procedures document file (<http://coastalgeospatial.noaa.gov/gis_files/shoreline/data/docs/procs.txt>).
This data file contains the individual NOAA-NOS medium resolution polyline files used to create the NOS80k polygon shapefile.
Although these data have been used by the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, no warranty expressed or implied is made by the U.S. Geological Survey as to the accuracy of the data.
1. East Coast -U.S./Canada Border at the St. Croix River to the southern tip of the Florida Peninsula (including the Keys)
2. Gulf of Mexico Coast -Southern tip of the Florida Peninsula (no Keys) to the U.S./Mexico Border at Brownsville, Texas.
3. West Coast -U.S./Mexico Border at Baja to U.S./Canada Border at the Straits of Juan DeFuca.
4. Great Lakes -All five lakes, in their entirety, including the connecting waterways (except the St. Lawrence River/Seaway).
For practical reasons the sections were further divided into three or more components:
Atlantic Coastal Section:
ec80_01 - St. Mary's Inlet Florida to Little River Inlet South Carolina; ec80_02 - Little River Inlet South Carolina to Cape Henry, Virginia; ec80_03 - Chesapeake Bay; ec80_04 - Chincoteague Inlet Virginia to Block Island Sound Rhode Island; ec80_05 - Point Judith to St. Croix River; ec80_06 - St. Mary's River, Florida to Florida Bay (including the Florida Keys.);
Gulf Coastal Section:
gc80_01 - Padre Island TX to Bayou Choupique, LA; gc80_02 - Lake Calcasieu, LA to Atchafalaya Bay, LA; gc80_03 - Point Au Fer, LA to Barataria Pass, LA; gc80_04 - Grand Terre Island, LA to Gulfport, MS, incl. the Chandeleurs Islands; gc80_05 - Biloxi River, MS to Chassahowitza Reefs, FL; gc80_06 - Chassahowitza Reefs, FL to Flamingo, FL;
Pacific Coastal Section:
wc80_01 - Semiahoo Bay, WA to Yaquina Head, OR; wc80_02 - Alsea Bay, OR to Point Sur, CA; wc80_03 - Point Sur, CA to U.S./Mexico Border;
Great Lakes Section:
gl80_01 - Lake Superior; gl80_02 - Lake Michigan incl. Lake Winnebago, WI; gl80_03 - Lake Huron incl. North Channel, and Georgian Bay; gl80_04 - Lake Erie incl. Detroit, St. Clair, and Niagara Rivers, and Lake St. Clair; gl80_05 - Lake Ontario incl. St. Lawrence River to Ogdensburg, NY.