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Satellite-derived shorelines and foredune toes along Minnesota Point (Duluth, MN) from 2016 to 2023

January 7, 2025

This data release contains 2 shapefiles which include 626 unique shorelines and 3 foredune toes spanning 2016 to 2023 along Minnesota Point, a 9-kilometer long bay-mouth bar at the western end of Lake Superior. Each shoreline represents the intersection line between land and water at a unique time associated with the capture of a satellite image, and these shorelines are used to examine trends in beach width and investigate beach nourishment performance in an accompanying publication (Roland et al., 2024). The shorelines were extracted from 3-meter resolution Planet Labs PlanetScope satellite imagery following the methods of Doherty et al., 2022. A site-specific machine learning model was developed to classify image pixels into water, whitewater, sand, and other land classifications, and the model is documented in an associated model archive (Roland, 2024). Each foredune toe line represents the manually interpreted intersection between the relatively flat beach face and the steeper dune face at a point in time associated with an aerial LiDAR data acquisition (July 2009, September 2019, and April 2021). The foredune toe positions are used to assess erosion trends along the length of Minnesota Point.

Publication Year 2025
Title Satellite-derived shorelines and foredune toes along Minnesota Point (Duluth, MN) from 2016 to 2023
DOI 10.5066/P1W7SBUX
Authors Collin J Roland, Joel T Groten
Product Type Data Release
Record Source USGS Asset Identifier Service (AIS)
Rights This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal
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