Historical Shoreline for New Jersey (1839 to 1875): T-sheets and Vector Digital Data

Historical shoreline surveys were conducted by the National Ocean Service (NOS), dating back to the early 1800s. The maps resulting from these surveys, often called t-sheets, provide a reference of historical shoreline position that can be compared to modern data to identify shoreline change. The t-sheets are stored at the National Archives and many have been scanned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and are available on the NOAA Shoreline website (https://shoreline.noaa.gov/data/datasheets/t-sheets.html). While some scanned t-sheets were georeferenced and digitized by NOAA, others remain as non-georeferenced raster files (https://nosimagery.noaa.gov/images/shoreline_surveys/survey_scans/NOAA_…).

This data set features georeferenced t-sheets and digitized historic shoreline for the New Jersey coastline from 1839 to 1875. The data were scanned by NOAA, but were not georeferenced. The t-sheets included in this data release are: T-121 (1839), T-119 Part 1 (1841), T-1084 (1868), T-1166 (1870), T-1333 (1871), T-1315a (1872), T-1371 (1874), T-1407 (1875). Digital files were georeferenced, corrected to a modern datum, and shorelines digitized to provide a vector polyline depicting the historical shoreline position. All shorelines, including the foreshore, backshore, mainland and island shorelines were delineated and digitized for each survey using ArcMap 10.3.1. This data release includes 8 raster t-sheets and 1 vector shoreline. These shorelines were digitized for use in long-term shoreline and wetland analyses for Hurricane Sandy wetland physical change assessment.