Atlantic and Gulf coast sandy coastline topo-bathy profile and characteristic database

The CUDEM topo-bathy data were interpolated to the extended lidar topographic profile coordinates. The original topographic lidar profiles from Doran and others (2017) were then stitched to the CUDEM interpolated profile at the shoreline datum elevation provided for each lidar derived profile. For profiles where the lidar shoreline datum elevation and the corresponding CUDEM shoreline datum elevation did not match in the cross-shore position, the CUDEM bathymetry was shifted shoreward or landward – based on the difference in cross-shore position of the lidar datum elevation. This methodology assumes that while this shifting of bathymetry does not represent the actual morphology and position associated with the lidar topography at that survey date, the stitching of these two temporally different datasets provides a reasonable representation of topo-bathy morphology for 1-dimensional morphologic modeling. The data were processed using MatLab R2016b.

The fore dune crest and toe elevations and locations, along with shoreline position and elevation were extracted from the lidar datasets published in Doran and others (2017). In some cases, the fore dune crest or toe may not have been previously extracted, and were therefore extracted from the lidar profile following methods provided in Stockdon and others (2012). Beach width (m) was measured as the distance between shoreline location and fore dune toe location. Beach volume (cubic meters) was calculated as the volume of sediment over the derived beach width (m). Fore dune width (m) was measured as the distance (m) between the fore dune toe and crest. The fore dune volume (cubic meters) was calculated as the sediment volume (cubic meters) over the derived fore dune width (m). Nearshore slope was measured as the ratio of the depth of closure (m) over the horizontal distance (m) between the depth of closure from Brutsche and others (2016) and the shoreline. The beach slope was measured as the ratio of the elevation of dune toe above the shoreline elevation over the horizontal distance (m) between shoreline and the fore dune toe (Doran and others, 2017). The data were processed using MatLab R2016b.

The final dataset of topo-bathy profiles and associated characteristics were exported to the open-source format of Hierarchical Data Format version 5 (HDF5) file using MatLab 2016b provided functions h5create, h5write, and h5 writeatt. All data are provided in a single file and are publicly available in Mickey and Passeri (2022a). Each profile within the HDF5 is considered a ‘group’ and designated by a specific number (syntax example 1: ‘/Profile/ID_1’), while each profile group contains a ‘dataset’ of the profile’s associated topo-bathy elevations (syntax example 1: ‘/Profile/ID_1/Elevation’), coordi-nates, and morphologic characteristics. Subsection 2.1 provides a description of the variables associated with an individual profile (group) within the HDF5 file.