I need to calculate distance to the coast based on a latitude and longitude point. My concept is to use a line of the East Coast to calculate the distance.
Does anyone know where I can find a mainland US coastal shapefile?
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2Your question can be redirected to Open Data...– Cyril MikhalchenkoCommented Oct 3, 2019 at 13:48
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Where have you looked? How about getting the eastern state boundaries and editing out the non-coastal part in a GIS?– SpacedmanCommented Oct 3, 2019 at 15:53
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1Water polygons are available here: osmdata.openstreetmap.de/data/water-polygons.html you should be able to get what you want out of that data– Inactivated AccountCommented Oct 3, 2019 at 15:57
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1 Answer
See NOAA's website. This page has a link to a medium resolution shoreline that works well for teaching and basic visualization purposes.
https://shoreline.noaa.gov/data/datasheets/medres.html
Also, this is an appropriate place to introduce the concept of vertical datums with regards to how the shoreline is mapped. This particular file uses the "mean high water" tidal datum, which is "The average of all the high water heights observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch". There are many other widely used datums that describe various metrics that apply to what is commonly referred to "sea level" in different ways. This is something to be mindful of when using these type of datasets in GIS analyses.
