2010 profile-derived mean high water shorelines of the South Coast of MA used in shoreline change analysis

Explanation of the methods used to delineate shoreline features that are a part of this update for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management Shoreline Change Project:
This data release has two methods of shoreline extraction: the profile method and the contour method. The profile method is further broken down into two varieties: shorelines that are extracted along open-ocean coasts and those that are sheltered.
Profile open-ocean coast (bias): datum-based mean high water (MHW) shoreline. The elevation of MHW was obtained from Weber and others (2005). These data have an associated uncertainty table that provides the horizontal uncertainty associated with the shoreline, a proxy-datum bias value describing the unidirectional horizontal offset between the MHW shoreline and the historical proxy-based high water line (HWL) shorelines, and the uncertainty associated with the calculated proxy-datum bias value. These shorelines are polyline-M shapefiles.
Profile not open-ocean (no bias): datum-based mean high water (MHW) shoreline. Since Weber and others (2005) only covers open-ocean coast, all MHW elevations for these data come from NOAA's vdatum (version 3.8; https://vdatum.noaa.gov/). These data have an associate d uncertainty table that provides the horizontal uncertainty associated with the shoreline. These shorelines are polyline-M shapefiles.
Contour method: this method is used along sections of the coast that were too crenulated for the profile method. The elevation of MHW was used from Weber and others, 2005 when available. In areas not covered by Weber and others (2005), NOAA's vdatum (version 3.8; https://vdatum.noaa.gov/) is used to determine MHW. Once this value is determined, the contour line of that value is extracted from the DEM surface in the area of interest. These shorelines are polyline shapefiles.
Not included in this data release is another method of shoreline delineation. A brief explanation of this method is provided to convey the importance of the information contained in the uncertainty tables, even if that information is not actively used in all cases in this data release.
Proxy-based historical shorelines: Vector shorelines digitized from georegistered T-sheets using standard editing tools in ArcMap provide a proxy-based high water line (HWL) feature that is not tidally-referenced. Individually these shorelines are stored as polyline shapefiles. In previous analyses (see Himmelstoss and others, 2011 listed in cross references) these data were published as a merged file with profile method data extracted from lidar. Therefore the published data are all polyline-M, but the historic HWL shorelines contain no linear referencing. Visually identified HWL-type proxy shorelines are virtually never coincident with datum-based MHW-type shorelines. In fact, HWL shorelines are almost universally estimated to be higher (landward) on the beach profile than MHW shorelines. Not accounting for this offset will cause shoreline change rates to be biased toward slower shoreline retreat, progradation rather than retreat, or faster progradation than in reality (for the typical case where datum-based MHW shorelines are more recent data than the proxy-based HWL shoreline dates).
The Digital Shoreline Analysis System software used to compute rates detects when proxy-based and datum-based shorelines are present and uses linear referencing to retrieve the information on bias and uncertainty stored in the DBF table associated with the profile method shorelines and correct for the proxy-datum bias offset.

Whenever possible, a profile method was used to extract the operational Mean High Water (MHW) shoreline from the lidar point cloud data, using a Matlab-based approach (Matlab version 2015b) similar to the one developed by Stockdon and others (2002). Elevation values for the height of MHW were determined from vdatum (version 3.8) provided by NOAA (https://vdatum.noaa.gov/). We continued the practice set out by Weber and others, (2005) of using one MHW value for a continuous section of coast (as opposed to using a continuously varying value). We chose this value such that it is always within 15 cm of the value returned by vdatum at any point along the coast. For example, we used MHW = 0.6 m for all of Buzzards Bay even though vdatum shows it varying slightly over the basin. For the shorelines of the South Coast of Massachusetts (the coast betwen Buzzards Bay and the Rhode Island border), we used an average MHW elevation of 0.6 meters. This profile method uses a coast-following reference line with 20 m spaced profiles. All lidar data points that are within 1 m of each profile are associated with that profile. All work is done on the 2 m 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. Foreshore beach slope is 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) the uncertainty associated with the elevation of the raw lidar data and; 3)the uncertainty due to extrapolation. These three components of uncertainty were added in quadrature to yield a total error for each shoreline point. For details on each component, see pp.12-13 under the section titled Lidar-Derived MHW Shoreline Position Uncertainty in Hapke and others (2011).
There is a known horizontal offset between the datum-based lidar MHW shoreline and the proxy-based historical shorelines on open-ocean sandy beaches that nearly always acts in one direction (Ruggiero and List, 2009). Wave data from offshore buoys is used with the beach slope in a run-up equation to estimate a proxy-datum bias correction to reconcile the unidirectional offset that the proxy-based historic High Water Line (HWL) shorelines, such as those derived from NOAA t-sheets or air photos, have in relationship to the lidar-derived, datum-based operational MHW line. An uncertainty associated with the bias was also computed, which can also be thought of as the uncertainty of the HWL shorelines due to water level fluctuations. For details on the proxy-datum bias and bias uncertainty, see pp.9-11 under the section titled The Proxy-Datum Bias Correction between HWL and MHW Shorelines in Hapke and others (2011).
Hapke, C.J., Himmelstoss, E.A., Kratzmann, M.G., List, J.H., and Thieler, E.R., 2011, National assessment of shoreline change—Historical shoreline change along the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010-1118, 57 p., https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1118/.
Ruggiero, P., and List, J.H., 2009, Improving accuracy and statistical reliability of shoreline position and change rate estimates: Journal of Coastal Research, v. 25, no. 5, p. 1069-1081. [Also available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/27752753]
Stockdon, H.F., Sallenger, A.H., List, J.H., and Holman, R.A., 2002, Estimation of shoreline position and change using airborne topographic lidar data: Journal of Coastal Research, v.18, no. 3, p. 502-513. [Also available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/4299097]

The series of points representing the shoreline were converted into a calibrated route shapefile for use in ArcGIS using a Python script (for Python v2.7.12). The script generates a point shapefile, converts it to a polyline-M file, saves the uncertainty information in an accessory dBase (.dbf) file and finally generates a calibrated route for the newly-created polyline-M file. Calibration is based on the unique and sequential profile ID value provided with the point data and stored as the M-value. This value is also stored as an attribute in the uncertainty .dbf file and is used as the common attribute field linking the shoreline route file (filename_pshoreline.shp) to the uncertainty table (filename_pshoreline_uncertainty.dbf where filename indicates the area of work, such as MarthasVineyard and the p indicates the profile method) storing the lidar positional uncertainty.
This process step and all subsequent process steps, unless otherwise noted, were performed by the same person - Emily Himmelstoss.

The shorelines shapefile was projected in Esri's ArcToolbox (v.10.5) > Data Management Tools > Projections and Transformations > Feature > Project. Parameters: input projection – NAD 83 UTM 19N; output projection - geographic coordinates (WGS 84); transformation - WGS_1984_To_NAD_1983_1.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword (20200810). Tweaked a thesaurus name (20211117).