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) 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 (MA CZM) 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).
All MA CZM shoreline data were appended to the USGS CapeCod_shorelines.shp shapefile in ArcToolbox >Data Management Tools>General>Append and was renamed OuterCapeCod_shorelines. The appended shoreline dataset was coded with the following attribute fields: ID, Route ID, Source, Date, Uncertainty (Uncy), Shape Length (Shape_Leng), Year, and Original ID.
This process step and all subsequent process steps were performed by the same person - Theresa Smith.
Boak, E.H., and Turner, I.L., 2005, Shoreline definition and detection: a review: Journal of Coastal Research, v. 21, n. 4, p. 688703.
Thieler, E.R., J.F. OConnell, and C.A. Schupp, 2001, The Massachusetts Shoreline Change Project: 1800s to 1994: USGS Administrative Report to the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, Boston, MA, 26 p. + Appendices.
The attribute field Location was added to the attribute table by clicking on the drop-down menu in the table and choosing add field. The field was populated by manually selecting the shorelines and classifying the selection using the field calculator. The shorelines were classified as either sheltered coasts (shorelines located in regions not directly exposed to ocean waves and are typically characterized by lower wave energy), or open ocean (shorelines located in regions that are directly exposed to ocean waves and are typically characterized by higher wave energy). In some cases, when a single shoreline occupied both the open ocean and sheltered coasts regions, it was necessary to split the shoreline into smaller segments, using the Split Tool (ArcMap v. 10) in a standard edit session.
Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.