P09_Oct2012_Oct2014: Hurricane Sandy Beach Response and Recovery at Fire Island, New York: Shoreline and Beach Profile Data, October 2012 to October 2014.

FIELD COLLECTED DATA TO SHAPEFILE CONVERSION
(1)For each date/series of cross-shore data points, import tabular data into ArcMap: File >> Add Data >> Add XY Data
(2)Select X:easting, Y: northing and Z:NAVD88 and lastly
(3)The resulting file is an eventlayer; right click and export layer to a new shapefile; For example the data for October 28th 2012 is exported as Oct282012_ALL.shp For the following set of steps, profile P07, which was collected on 28 Oct 2012 will be used as an example to explain the files/steps generated.

EDITS TO cCROSS-SHORE DATA
(1)Cross-shore profiles are edited to create unique shapefiles for each date and cross-shore profile location. For example, from the file Oct282012_ALL.shp data for each profile location will be selected and exported to generate 10 new shapefiles for each profile location (P07-P11, P22-P26) ex:P07_Oct282012.shp.
(2)From this selection, the profile data is cleaned to remove any long shore data and reduce the profile data to one continuous line (often the cross-shore data is collected in two parallel paths, both up and down the beach face).
(3)Cross-shore data is saved as: P07_Oct282012EDITS.shp

PROFILE TRANSLATION: Prior to collection, the start position of cross-shore profile data is determined using a hand held GPS with a map of an existing original profile. The field team attempts to follow the cross-shore position of this original profile. However, a review of the cross-shore data collection shows the filed collected data can vary widely (10-40m) from the original profile. So a method was developed to "translate" a distance along original profile measurements to the new cross-shore data, so all profile data (new and old) could be plotted together.
CALCULATE DISATANCE ALONG ORIGINAL PROFILE:
(1)Transects spaced 1m apart were generated, using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS version 4.3, Thieler et al, 2009) cast from a baseline oriented roughly parallel to the cross-shore data and perpendicular to the shoreline, such that the transects would then parallel prominent features of the beach - dune crest, berm crest etc. The transects intersect the original profile and all subsequent cross-shore profiles, covering the entire area of original and new data collection. File saved as Profile Name_trans, or P07_trans.shp
(2)Points were created at the intersection of the original profile and the transects: ArcToolbox>>Analysis Tools>>Overlay>>Intersect>> Inputs: Original Profile and transects, Join Attributes: ALL, XY Tolerance: 0.2 m, Output Type: POINT, OUTPUT file P07_trans_intersect.shp (point shapefile).
(3)Calculate the distance of each transect intersection point along the original profile (profiles converted to routes: Linear Referencing Tools>>Create route) Distance along route (DAR) will be calculated and saved into attribute MEAS: ArcToolbox >>Linear Referencing Tools>>Locate features along routes: Input: P07_trans_intersect.shp, Input Route Features: original profile (route), Output Event Table: P07_intersect_DAR.
(4)Join P07_intersect_DAR table to P07_trans.shp and add a new field to P07_trans to copy MEAS to: DistalRout. This file will be used for the following steps.
ADD DISTANCE ALONG PROFILE TO CROSS-SHORE DATA:
(1)Use spatial join to join P07_trans.shp and the cross-shore profile data P07_Oct282012EDITS.shp into a new shapefile, P07_Oct282012dist.shp. This will merge all the attributes of each dataset together. In the process of the join, an additional field Distance is automatically added to P07_Oct282012dist.shp, which indicates the distance of the cross-shore data points to the transect. As the point spacing of the field collected data is denser than the 1m transect spacing, multiple points in P07_Oct282012dist.shp will display the same value for DistAlRout.
(2)Open P07_Oct282012dist.dbf in Microsoft Excel, and edit to contain ONLY site, easting, northing, NAVD88, DistAlRout, and Distance. A new field Date is added to the first column, and manually entered to reflect the date of the data (ie. 10/28/2012). All other fields are deleted.
(3)Use Excel tools (Data>>Sort) to sort the data by DistAlRout and (adding a level) Distance.
(4)Remove duplicates(Data>>Remove Duplicates) in DistAlRout (as described there are more than one data point for each DistAlRout value) and save file as and excel 97-2003 workbook extension .xls (.xlsx can not be opened in ArcMap): P07_Oct282012dist.xls
(5)Using ESRI ArcMap v10.0, add XY data (File>>Add Data>> Add XY data) and select P07_Oct282012dist.xls with X: easting, Y:northing and Z: NAVD88. Save resultant event layer to a new shapefile P07_28Oct2012.shp
(6)Repeat this step for all cross-shore profile dates at each profile location.
References: Thieler, E.R., Himmelstoss, E.A., Zichichi, J.L., and Ergul, Ayhan, 2009, Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) version 4.0 An ArcGIS extension for calculating shoreline change: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2008-1278.

Append all dates from each location to one shapefile: ArcToolbox>>Data Management Tools>>General>>Append: select all dates for each profile location (ex: P07_28Oct2012.shp, P07_01Nov2012.shp, P07_04Nov2012.shp, P07_01Dec2012.shp etc. to P07_29Jun2014.shp) and save to a new shapefile (ex: P07_Oct2012_Jun2012.shp)

Shapefiles exported from ArcCatalog and .dbf edited to reduce attributes to: Date, Elevation (m NAVD88) and Distance along Profile(m). File is then saved as a Microsoft Excel 2010 workbook, extenstion .xlsx.

Keywords section of metadata optimized for discovery in USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Data Catalog.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword.