NOAA Medium Resolution Shoreline
Data Access
Purpose and Potential Applications: This data set was derived from NOAA National Ocean Service (NOS) nautical charts to capture the representative shoreline. Other potential applications include cartographic representation and boundary determination.
Originator(s): National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Special Projects Office (formerly known as NOAA’s Strategic Environmental Assessments Division)
Abstract: NOAA's medium-resolution digital vector shoreline is a high-quality, geographic information system (GIS)-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 (ORCA). Compiled from hundreds of NOAA nautical charts, this product comprises over 75,000 nautical miles of coastline (nearly 2.5 million vertices), representing the entire continental United States of America.
Access: NOAA’s Coastal Geospatial Data Project website
Scale(s): Average scale of 1:70,000. Actual resolution of the shoreline data does, however, vary locally as a result of non-continuous coverage of the U. S. Coast at the targeted scale. Actual source chart scales range from 1:10,000 to 1:600,000, depending on the particular section of coastline.
Coverage: Continental U.S. – does not include Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and all other interests and territories of the U.S.
Source Data: NOAA nautical charts
Spatial Reference: Geographic coordinate system (decimal degrees); Horizontal Datum – North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83).
Tidal datum: Mean high water
Data Format: ESRI shapefile. Shorelines are distributed as a seamless line file can be downloaded by geographic region.
Accuracy: The data supplied here are a compilation of information collected from many current or prerelease NOS navigation charts. These charts are advertised to meet or exceed current National Map Accuracy Standards when plotted as a hard-copy product to the appropriate source chart scale. However, in compiling this derived product, the developers made no attempt to ascertain the congruency between the charted data and the real world.
Process Description: Generation of this shoreline product was accomplished in five stages: data capture, chart cover construction, segment assembly, verification, and final formatting/archive. Stage 1, data capture, involves the initial conversion of the analog source data, NOS coastal series navigational charts, into a digital vector image. During stage 2, the raw vector image is converted into an ArcInfo GIS coverage. In addition, during this phase of the work, the data are corrected (gross error removal), topologies are constructed, descriptive information is added, and an intermediate archive is created. The third stage is segment assembly. Here, the chart cover data are partitioned into regionally contiguous groupings (referred to as sections), adjacent boundaries are matched, and the individual charts are joined together to produce continuous shoreline segments. Following assembly, stage 4, data verification, is initiated. Portions of the sectional data are chosen at random to be plotted coincident with chart master sheets (mylars) and compared. Discrepancies are noted, corrective action, if required, is taken, and the data re-verified. The fifth and final stage is formatting and final archive.
Point of Contact:
Robert Wilson
NOAA NOS Special Projects Office
Robert.Wilson@noaa.gov
(301) 713-3000
Other References: