Long-Term Coastal Change
Goals of this task include developing and improving coastal-change assessments and supporting long-term planning and decision making to ensure sustainable coastal economies, infrastructure, and ecosystems.

Chronic erosion is widespread along most open-ocean coastlines of the U.S. and is an increasing threat to growing coastal populations and associated infrastructure. Long-term coastal change can also impact natural coastal processes and affect sensitive coastal ecosystems. Understanding how the coast has changed in the past and what factors have influenced those changes guides our understanding of what may happen in the future.
As part of the National Assessment of Coastal Change Hazards project, the USGS conducts studies of coastal change to better understand long-term coastal evolution and its response to factors such as the cumulative impact of storms, sea-level rise, changes in sediment supply, and human alterations over time periods spanning many decades. Goals of this project include developing and improving coastal-change assessments and supporting long-term planning and decision making to ensure sustainable coastal economies, infrastructure, and ecosystems.
Objectives
- Develop methodology to produce and update nationally-consistent long-term coastal-change analyses that integrate historical data from sources such as maps and photographs with modern data sources such as lidar and satellites.
- Produce a publically-available database of historical shoreline positions that is regularly updated as new data become available.
- Identify and understand the processes that affect long-term coastal change including geomorphology, human impacts, the cumulative impact of storms, and sea level rise.

Below are research tasks and science projects associated with this project.
National Assessment of Coastal Change Hazards
Integration of Processes over Different Spatial and Temporal Scales
National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea Level Rise
Video Remote Sensing of Coastal Processes
Below are publications associated with this research.
National assessment of shoreline change—Summary statistics for updated vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the north coast of Alaska, U.S.-Canadian Border to Icy Cape
National assessment of shoreline change—Summary statistics for updated vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Atlantic coasts
National Assessment of Shoreline Change; historical shoreline change along the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts
The national assessment of shoreline change: A GIS compilation of vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the New England and Mid-Atlantic Coasts
The National Assessment of Shoreline Change: A GIS compilation of vector cliff edges and associated cliff erosion data for the California coast
The National Assessment of Shoreline Change: A GIS compilation of vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the sandy shorelines of the California coast
The National Assessment of Shoreline Change: A GIS compilation of vector shorelines and associated shoreline change data for the U.S. southeast Atlantic coast
National Assessment Of Shoreline Change: Part 2, Historical Shoreline Changes And Associated Coastal Land Loss Along The U.S. Southeast Atlantic Coast
The National Assessment of Shoreline Change: A GIS Compilation of Vector Shorelines and Associated Shoreline Change Data for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico
National Assessment of Shoreline Change: Part 1, Historical Shoreline Changes and Associated Coastal Land Loss Along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico
Goals of this task include developing and improving coastal-change assessments and supporting long-term planning and decision making to ensure sustainable coastal economies, infrastructure, and ecosystems.

Chronic erosion is widespread along most open-ocean coastlines of the U.S. and is an increasing threat to growing coastal populations and associated infrastructure. Long-term coastal change can also impact natural coastal processes and affect sensitive coastal ecosystems. Understanding how the coast has changed in the past and what factors have influenced those changes guides our understanding of what may happen in the future.
As part of the National Assessment of Coastal Change Hazards project, the USGS conducts studies of coastal change to better understand long-term coastal evolution and its response to factors such as the cumulative impact of storms, sea-level rise, changes in sediment supply, and human alterations over time periods spanning many decades. Goals of this project include developing and improving coastal-change assessments and supporting long-term planning and decision making to ensure sustainable coastal economies, infrastructure, and ecosystems.
Objectives
- Develop methodology to produce and update nationally-consistent long-term coastal-change analyses that integrate historical data from sources such as maps and photographs with modern data sources such as lidar and satellites.
- Produce a publically-available database of historical shoreline positions that is regularly updated as new data become available.
- Identify and understand the processes that affect long-term coastal change including geomorphology, human impacts, the cumulative impact of storms, and sea level rise.

Below are research tasks and science projects associated with this project.
National Assessment of Coastal Change Hazards
Integration of Processes over Different Spatial and Temporal Scales
National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea Level Rise
Video Remote Sensing of Coastal Processes
Below are publications associated with this research.