The Coastal and Marine Geology Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, has compiled reliable historical shoreline data along open-facing sections of the Massachusetts coast under the Massachusetts Shoreline Change Mapping and Analysis Project 2013 Update. Two oceanfront shorelines for Massachusetts (approximately 1,800 km in total length) were (1) delineated using 2008/09 color aerial orthoimagery, and (2) extracted from topographic LIDAR datasets (2007) obtained from NOAA's Ocean Service, Coastal Services Center. The new shorelines were integrated with existing Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and USGS historical shoreline data in order to compute long- and short-term rates using the latest version of the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS).
Fenster, M.S., Dolan, R., and Morton, R.A., 2001, Coastal storms and shoreline change: signal or noise?: Journal of Coastal Research, v. 17, no. 3, p. 714-720.
The NewEnglandN_shorelines_uncertainty.dbf file and the GreaterBoston_shorelines_uncertainty.dbf files were imported to the geodatabase containing the North Shore data. The tables were renamed to match the corresponding shoreline shapefiles (NewEnglandN_shorelines_uncertainty.dbf was renamed NorthShoreA_shorelines_uncertainty.dbf, and GreaterBoston_shorelines_uncertainty.dbf was renamed NorthShoreB_shorelines_uncertainty).
Rate Calculations Performed using DSAS v4.3, for the North Shore A subregion on selected shorelines (shoreline years 1970 2009). Parameters Used: shoreline layer=NorthShoreA_shorelines, shoreline date field=Date_, shoreline uncertainty field name=Uncy (additional shoreline data stored in NorthShoreA_shoreline_uncertainty.dbf), the default accuracy=10.8 meters, shoreline intersection parameters=nearest, stats calculations=[Shoreline Change Envelope (SCE), Net Shoreline Movement (NSM), Linear Regression Rate (LRR)], shoreline threshold=3, confidence interval=90%, Output rate table name=NorthShoreA_transects_rates_20121127_113618. Output intersects table name=NorthShoreA_transects_intersect_20121127_113618.dbf.
This process step and all subsequent process steps were performed by Theresa Smith.
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