ShoreZone is a mapping program that uses oblique

aerial images TerraServer was a commercial website specializing in aerial and satellite imagery which was originally launched in 1997. It is owned and operated by TerraServer.com, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina. The company was previously named Aerial Ima ...

acquired at low altitude, and during the lowest daylight

tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide tables can ...

s of the year, to inventory alongshore and across-shore

geomorphological Geomorphology (from Ancient Greek: , ', "earth"; , ', "form"; and , ', "study") is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or ...

and biological features of the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

intertidal The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore, is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide (in other words, the area within the tidal range). This area can include several types of habitats with various species of ...

shoreline.

Habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

attributes are interpreted from the aerial images and categorized in a geographic database. The mapping project was first developed as an

oil spill An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is usually given to marine oil spills, where oil is released into t ...

response tool for British Columbia, and now ShoreZone extends from

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

and has many other uses including ecological studies,

marine conservation Marine conservation, also known as ocean conservation, is the protection and preservation of ecosystems in oceans and seas through planned management in order to prevent the over-exploitation of these marine resources. Marine conservation is ...

planning, coastal flooding and vulnerability assessments, and community education.

Development

A ShoreZone imaging and mapping prototype was originally developed by Dr. Ed Owens and demonstrated on

Saltspring Island Salt Spring Island or Saltspring Island is one of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia between mainland British Columbia, Canada, and Vancouver Island. The island was initially inhabited by various Salishan peoples before being settled b ...

, British Columbia in 1979 . A decade of further development resulted in the first protocols for the Physical Shore-zone Mapping System published by the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment. A compatibl
biological classification
was developed in the early 1990s and the fully integrated biophysical mapping system was first applied to Gwaii Haanas National Park, with the remainder of British Columbia imaged and mapped from 1991 to 2007. The State of

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

was imaged and mapped between 1994-2000, and the coast of

was imaged in 2011 and mapped in 2013. The Alaska program began in 2001 when th
Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council
contracted Coastal and Ocean Resources Inc. to image and map

Cook Inlet Cook Inlet ( tfn, Tikahtnu; Sugpiaq: ''Cungaaciq'') stretches from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage. On its so ...

, and as of 2020 the Alaska program is on-going (see map). The spatially contiguous database of imagery and habitat attributes now includes over 100,000 km of shoreline. In 2014, Dr. Carl Schoch of Coastwise Science pioneered the use of

Structure From Motion Structure from motion (SfM) is a photogrammetric range imaging technique for estimating three-dimensional structures from two-dimensional image sequences that may be coupled with local motion signals. It is studied in the fields of computer visi ...

using Microsoft Photosynth to orthorectify ShoreZone oblique aerial imagery and to generate a point cloud of photographed objects used to produce a three-dimensional model of the shoreline. The concept was derived from the Argus Coastal Monitoring Systems that observe and quantitatively document the coastal environment. These systems typically employ a group of fixed digital video cameras mounted with overlapping fields of view taking consistently timed images of the nearshore zone that are merged and orthorectified in post-processing. The digital post-processing of the ShoreZone imagery using Structure From Motion allows for quantitative measurements of shoreline unit dimensions, percent cover of substrate, percent cover of macro epiflora and epifauna, and time series assessments of shoreline change. In areas where a temporal sequence of imagery exists, such as in Cook Inlet Alaska and the North Coast of British Columbia, the time series are analyzed to quantify shoreline

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

accretion Accretion may refer to: Science * Accretion (astrophysics), the formation of planets and other bodies by collection of material through gravity * Accretion (meteorology), the process by which water vapor in clouds forms water droplets around nucl ...

, and vulnerability to flooding in the context of

sea level rise Globally, sea levels are rising due to human-caused climate change. Between 1901 and 2018, the globally averaged sea level rose by , or 1–2 mm per year on average.IPCC, 2019Summary for Policymakers InIPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryo ...

and changing wave dynamics. Beginning in 2016, commercial software is used to digitally process the aerial images to create

orthophoto An orthophoto, orthophotograph, orthoimage or orthoimagery is an aerial photograph or satellite imagery geometrically corrected ("orthorectified") such that the scale is uniform: the photo or image follows a given map projection. Unlike a ...

mosaics and shoreline elevation models. The ShoreZone imaging and mapping protocols were revised in 2016 to integrate thes
new techniques
The Alaska portion of the ShoreZone database is now part of th
Alaska Ocean Observing System
and the

Integrated Ocean Observing System The Integrated Ocean Observing SystemIOOS is an organization of systems that routinely and continuously provides quality controlled data and information on current and future states of the oceans and Great Lakes from the global scale of ocean basi ...

Partnership

The ShoreZone mapping program is maintained by a unique consortium with no binding agreement. The consortium currently consists of over 50 local, regional, and national partners including First Nations, various industries, non-profits, state, provincial and federal governments. This partnership won the 2009 Coastal America Spirit Award that recognizes "exceptional projects that demonstrate the 'spirit' of teamwork for group efforts that are poised to address our challenging coastal issues.” In the United States, th
Oregon ShoreZone
program is supported by the

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) is a government agency of the U.S. state of Oregon responsible for programs protecting Oregon fish and wildlife resources and their habitats. The agency operates hatcheries, issues hunting and ...

and th
Oregon Coastal Management Program
Th
Washington ShoreZone
program is supported by the

Washington Department of Natural Resources The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages over of forest, range, agricultural, and commercial lands in the U.S. state of Washington. The DNR also manages of aquatic areas which include shorelines, tidelands, lands u ...

. The Alaska ShoreZone program has on-going support from the

National Marine Fisheries Service The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), informally known as NOAA Fisheries, is a United States federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is responsible for the ste ...

(NMFS) of the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

(NOAA) that also manages and distributes the imagery and data. In Canada, the British Columbia ShoreZone data is distributed by GeoBC.

The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in 1951, The Natu ...

coordinated the program until 2016.

Utility

Coastal resource managers need an inventory of habitats and associated biota that are threatened by increasing development and encroachment along coastal areas, as well as indirect effects of human activities. Coastal mapping efforts, such as ShoreZone, to a large extent fulfill these needs by providing physical and biological characterizations of the shoreline. The ShoreZone imagery and maps were originally intended as an oil spill response tool, and notably the data have been used in several emergency situations including the grounding in 2012 of the drilling barge '' Kulluk'' near Kodiak, Alaska. Although the majority of users access only the imagery, the regional scale habitat attribute data have been used for

ecological Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps w ...

modelling and

planning. More recently the data are benefiting

NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

climate resilience Climate resilience is defined as the "capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance".IPCC, 2022Summary for Policymakers .-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, M. Tignor, ...

studies. Recent improvements in quantifying habitat attributes allow for analytical studies such as estimating potential

Blue Carbon Blue Carbon refers to organic carbon that is captured and stored by the world's oceanic and coastal ecosystems, mostly by algae, seagrasses, macroalgae, mangroves, salt marshes and other plants in coastal wetlands. The term Blue Carbon was coine ...

resources of

salt marsh A salt marsh or saltmarsh, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. It is dominate ...

es. The imagery also has aesthetic appeal and is used for travel guides and gazetteers, art exhibits, exploring, books, and story maps.

Assessments

Over 450 ground stations have been used to inform the mapping process and to evaluate the accuracy of the interpreted aeria
imagery
The utility of ShoreZone maps for change detection were assessed by independent reviewers in 2009 and 2011, and findings include: 1) the NOAA Coast63 digital shoreline used by ShoreZone in Alaska poorly resolves features less than 50 meters, i.e., many small scale features are not represented and thus cannot be accurately described; 2) ShoreZone has no explicit minimum or maximum mapping unit resulting in inconsistent placement of unit breaks among mappers; 3) the combination of 1 & 2 contributes to the lack of repeatable unit breaks leading to potential false positive and false negative indications of change at the scale of individual shore units; and 4) users must be cognizant of the limitations imposed by qualitative mapping protocols used prior to th
2016 revisions
http://www.sf.adfg.state.ak.us/FedAidPDFs/FDS11-63.pdf

References

{{reflist

External links

ShoreZone

CoastViewAlaska ShoreZoneWashington ShoreZoneOregon ShoreZone
Coastal geography