Assateague Island Shoreline Position Data, 1994-2025

Assateague Island National Seashore (ASIS) Shoreline Position Change Monitoring Data Package contains a series of mean-high water shorelines assembled for the Northeast Coastal & Barrier Inventory and Monitoring Network. The data represent shoreline positions collected by vehicle or walking surveys along the high tide swash line between the winter of 1994 and spring of 2025. The dataset is provided by the Department of the Interior and was last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal erosion rates based on repeated shoreline position measurements.
• Analyzing the impact of storms on beach morphology based on shoreline change data.
• Monitoring long-term geomorphic change at barrier islands based on the 30+ year time series.

Strengths

• Data collection spans over 30 years, from winter 1994 to spring 2025.
• Shoreline positions were recorded at high spatial resolution (at least one point every 10 meters).

Limitations

• Some surveys collected prior to 2003 lack FGDC-compliant metadata records.
• Row count and specific column definitions are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• The description does not specify the license for use.

Provenance

Source

Department of the Interior

Collection Method

Surveys collected by driving a 4-wheel drive vehicle or walking along the high tide swash line, with positions recorded via GPS/GNSS receiver.

Time Range

Winter 1994 to Spring 2025

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-04 01:31:51.389616

Geography

Assateague Island National Seashore, spanning Maryland and Virginia