A profile method was used to extract the operational MHW shoreline from the lidar point cloud data utilizing the Matlab-based approach (Matlab version 2019b) described in Farris and others (2018). Elevation values for the height of MHW were obtained from Weber and others (2005). The profile method used a coast-following reference line with 20-meter spaced profiles. All lidar data points that were within 1 meter of each profile line were associated with that profile. All processing was done on the 2-meter-wide profiles, working on a single profile at a time. For each profile, a linear regression was fit through data points on the foreshore and the regression was evaluated at the MHW elevation to yield the cross-shore position of the MHW shoreline. If there was a data gap at MHW or if the MHW elevation was obscured by water points, the linear regression was simply extrapolated to the MHW elevation. For each profile, the foreshore beach slope was defined as the slope of the regression line.
Each MHW shoreline point that was extracted using this profile method has an uncertainty associated with it. This uncertainty includes three components: 1) the 95% confidence interval on the linear regression estimate of the shoreline position; 2) a 15 cm vertical error in the raw lidar data that was converted into a horizontal error using the beach slope; and 3) the uncertainty due to extrapolation (if the shoreline was determined using extrapolation). These three components of uncertainty were added in quadrature to yield a total error for each shoreline point.
Farris, A.S., Weber, K.M., Doran, K.S., and List, J.H., 2018, Comparing methods used by the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program for deriving shoreline position from lidar data: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2018–1121, 13 p.,
https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20181121
Weber, K.M., List, J.H., Morgan, K.L.M., 2005, An Operational Mean High Water Datum for Determination of Shoreline Position from Topographic Lidar Data: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2005–1027,
https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20051027
Lidar shorelines were extracted by Amy Farris, Kathy Weber, Zehao Xue, and Marie Bartlett of the USGS from 2015 through 2020 using the method described in this step.