2014 profile-derived mean high water shorelines of the south shore of Cape Cod, MA used in shoreline change analysis

Publication Date

2018-11-26

Start Date

2014-04-06

End Date

2014-06-06

Himmelstoss, E.A., Farris, A.S., and Weber, K.M., 2018, Massachusetts shoreline change project: A GIS compilation of vector shorelines for the 2018 update: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O7S72B.

This mean high water (MHW) datum-based shoreline dataset was extracted using a profile method. The profile method for extracting shorelines was initially developed for open-ocean coasts. This shoreline does not have buoy data from which to gather wave data, so the run-up equations the profile method implements to estimate a proxy-datum bias value cannot be used. The region of the coast tends to have lower wave energy, which would result in less run-up and yield a smaller offset between a proxy shoreline and a datum shoreline than would occur along open-ocean coasts. When this datum-based MHW shoreline is compared to historic proxy-based high water line shorelines there may be some artificial seaward offset of the historic data that has not been quantified and could potentially influence the rates.

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