Historical Shoreline Data for Delaware Bay, Derived from NOAA Maps

NOAA National Ocean Service and its predecessor agencies produced a high-resolution historical shoreline for Delaware Bay, Delaware. The data were automated for GIS use and conform to the NGS C-COAST attribution scheme, influenced by the International Hydrographic Organization's S-57 standard. This resource is a member of a larger NOAA data collection.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical shoreline change based on the high-resolution historical shoreline data.
• Integrating coastal data layers into a GIS based on the automated, attributed format.
• Translating shoreline data into S-57 hydrographic standard formats based on the C-COAST attribution scheme.
• Analyzing coastal zone features for Delaware Bay based on the derived map data.

Strengths

• Data is derived from shoreline maps produced by the authoritative NOAA National Ocean Service.
• Shoreline is described as high-resolution and historically accurate.
• Attribution follows a defined scheme (C-COAST) for consistency.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the original source maps.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Derived from shoreline maps based on office interpretation of imagery and/or field survey.

Time Range

Historical (specific range not provided).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 21:20:46.947055; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Delaware Bay, Delaware, North America