Cliff Feature Delineation Tool and Baseline Builder version 1.0 user guide

Coastal cliffs constitute 80 percent of the world’s coastline, with seacliffs fronting a large proportion of the U.S. West Coast shoreline, particularly in California. Erosion of coastal cliffs can threaten infrastructure and human life, yet the spatial and temporal scope of cliff studies have been limited by cumbersome traditional methods that rely on the manual interpretation of seacliff features—especially seacliff toes and top edges. The Cliff Feature Delineation Tool (CFDT) and the Baseline Builder Tool are designed to increase the efficiency of deriving seacliff features from remote sensing datasets by utilizing an automated, quantitative approach that eliminates traditional interpretive methods and ensures reproducibility. This document functions as a user guide for operating the Cliff Feature Delineation Tool and Baseline Builder Tool and includes a walkthrough of data-visualization and data-review workflows for the tools’ three-dimensional (3D) cliff feature outputs. Also included is a brief overview of cliff feature delineation at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a detailed description of the tools’ algorithmic logic.