| Summary |
The Barrier Island and Estuarine Wetland Physical Change Assessment Dataset was created to calibrate and test probability models of barrier island sandline and estuarine shoreline change for study areas in Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. The models examined the influence of hydrologic and physical variables related to storm-derived overwash and estuarine shoreline change. Variables were calculated using a transect-based method in a geographic information system (GIS) by creating shoreline-perpendicular lines at regular intervals along the oceanfront shoreline and extrapolating the features from geospatial data, including lidar, bathymetry and aerial imagery. In addition, the dataset provides storm-derived barrier island change for Hurricane Sandy, as well as linear rates of change for long-term sandline and estuarine shorelines.
Shoreline rates of change are considered a crucial element in performing change analysis for erosion and accretion studies and for tracking shoreline movement over time. The Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) is computer software that uses transects as a method to extract shoreline change rates from shorelines at a given interval across a baseline. For this long term analysis, transects were spaced out at a 50-m interval across the baseline and shoreline change rates were calculated for the long-term (1849-2013). The rates of change were joined to the transects to allow for a visual representation of these rates. The elevation, bathymetric depths, wave heights, surge, runup, and total water level (TWL) were calculated for each transect so that the rates of change corresponded with this new data. |
