Assateague Island Open-Ocean Shorelines Extracted from Orthoimagery, 1989 - 2013


Assessing the physical change to shorelines and wetlands  is critical in determining the resiliency of wetland systems that protect adjacent habitat and communities. The wetland and back-barrier shorelines of Assateague Island, located in Maryland and Virginia, changed as a result of wave action and storm surge that occurred during Hurricane Sandy, which made landfall on October 29, 2012.  The impact of Hurricane Sandy  will be assessed and placed in its historical context to understand the future vulnerability of wetland systems.
Making these assessments will rely on data extracted from current and historical resources such as maps, aerial photographs, satellite imagery, and lidar elevation data, which document physical changes over time.
This USGS Data Series publication includes several open-ocean shorelines, back-island shorelines, back-island shoreline points, sand area polygons, and sand lines for Assateague Island that were extracted from orthoimagery (ortho aerial photography) dated from April 12, 1989 to September 5, 2013.
This dataset consists of lines that were hand-digitized at the approximate open-ocean water line at a scale of approximately 1:2,000.  The lines were visually generalized through waves and swash zones by the photointerpreter.
Orthoimagery of Assateague Island were acquired in digital format from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Virginia Geographic Information Network (VGIN) courtesy of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The following list provides additional details about the orthoimagery used.  The open-ocean shorelines for all dates have been compiled in one dataset (shapefile) named asis_sshrln_1989_2013.shp.  The orthoimage date for each line is in the shapefile attribute table Date_ field.

Date			State		Type	Source	Resolution

198904129(1)	MD		DOQQ	USGS		1 meter (m)
19940320		VA		DOQQ	USGS		1 m
20041105		VA		NAIP	USDA		2 m
20050608		VA		NAIP	USDA		2 m
20050615		MD		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20060528		VA		NAIP	USDA 		2 m
20060701		MD		NAIP	USDA		2 m
20070622		MD		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20080525		VA		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20090626		MD		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20090726		VA		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20090807		VA		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20110530		VA		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20110602 		MD		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20120512		VA		NAIP	USDA		1 m
20130315		VA		VBMP	VGIN(2)	1 m(3)
20130905		MD		NAIP	USDA		1 m

DOQQ	Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quads
NAIP	National Agriculture Imagery Program
VBMP Virginia Base Mapping Program

(1)Color Infrared orthoimagery; all others are natural color.
(2)Imagery courtesy of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
(3)Resampled from 1-foot resolution imagery.


Tags: 1989, 1994, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, accomack, aerial-photography, assateague-island, coastal-processes-gt-beaches, doi-usgs-cmg-gt-coastal-and-marine-geology-u-s-geological-survey-u-s-department-of-interior, erosion, land-surface-gt-land-use-land-cover-gt-land-cover, maryland, national-seashore, ocean-gt-coastal-processes-gt-barrier-islands, orthoimagery, orthophotography, remote-sensing, shoreline, united-states, usgs-7f3e532e-c870-47a3-b89f-3713260f6d3d, virginia, wetlands, worcester
Organization: Department of the Interior