Midshore baseline for the exposed central Beaufort Sea coast of Alaska (Hulahula River to the Colville River) generated to calculate shoreline change rates

The Arctic Coastal Plain of northern Alaska is an area of strategic economic importance to the United States, is home to remote Native American communities, and encompasses unique habitats of global significance. Coastal erosion is a persistent process along most open-ocean shores of the United States and affects both developed and natural coastlines. Along the Arctic coast of Alaska, coastal erosion is widespread and threatens communities, defense and energy-related infrastructure, and coastal habitat. As the coast changes, there are a wide range of ways that change can affect coastal communities, habitats, and the physical characteristics of the coast-including beach erosion, shoreline retreat, land loss, and damage to infrastructure. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is responsible for conducting research on coastal change hazards, understanding the processes that cause coastal change, and developing models to forecast future change. To understand and adapt to shoreline change, accurate information regarding the past and present configurations of the shoreline is essential and a comprehensive, nationally consistent analysis of shoreline movement is needed. To meet this national need, the USGS is conducting an analysis of historical shoreline changes along open-ocean coasts of the United States and parts of the Great Lakes. In Alaska, coastlines sheltered from open-ocean wave conditions by barrier islands are also included in the analysis because of their importance to defense and energy-related infrastructure and to understand the similarities, differences, and linkages in coastal behavior and physical processes acting on exposed and sheltered permafrost coastlines. This dataset is one in a series of regionally focused reports on historical shoreline change. As more data are gathered, periodic updates are made, which provide information that can be used in multidisciplinary assessments of global change impacts.