CoastSat Live

        

Basemaps
  Disclaimer

The time-series of shoreline change provided here are derived from satellite shorelines mapped with CoastSat using publicly available imagery (Landsat Tier 1). The following limitations should be considered:

  1. The horizontal accuracy of the satellite-derived shorelines is 10-15 m (shoreline changes of less than 15 m cannot be resolved).

  2. The coverage of the Landsat collections is not homogeneous around the globe, check the Metadata layer named "Landsat Tier 1" to see how many images are available in your region of interest.

  3. The cross-shore transects were generated automatically, verify that the transects that you are using are shore-normal, in particular at the extremities of a beach

  4. The following cases may lead to erroneous data:
    • Submerged reefs adjacent to the shoreline and rocky platforms
    • Coastal inlets and lagoon entrances
    • Shadows from cliffs or high-rise buildings on West-facing beaches (all images are taken at 10am when sun is from the east)
CoastSat Data

1) Click on a shoreline to visualise the transects at that beach by using the transects button
2) Click on a transect to visualise the time-series of shoreline change (de-meaned).
3) Click back on the shoreline and on the timeseries button to download the data.
4) Click on the summary button to download a site summary (inc. slope, trend).
5) See the Downloads tab for more options to download large-scale data and geospatial layers.

Note that the long-term trend values shown for each beach are an average of the trends along the individual transects.

1) Click on a shoreline to visualise the transects at that beach by using the transects button
2) Click on a transect to visualise the time-series of shoreline change (de-meaned).
3) Click back on the shoreline and on the timeseries button to download the data.
4) Click on the summary button to download a site summary (inc. slope, trend).
5) See the Downloads tab for more options to download large-scale data and geospatial layers.

1) Click on a shoreline to visualise the transects at that beach by using the transects button
2) Click on a transect to visualise the time-series of shoreline change (de-meaned).
3) Click back on the shoreline and on the timeseries button to download the data.
4) Click on the summary button to download a site summary (inc. slope, trend).
5) See the Downloads tab for more options to download large-scale data and geospatial layers.

The beach-face slope values in this dataset refer to the slope between MSL (Mean Sea Level) and MHWS (Mean High Water Springs). The methodology to obtain the beach-face slope estimates is described in: Vos K., Harley M.D., Splinter K.D., Walker A., Turner I.L. (2020). Beach slopes from satellite-derived shorelines. Geophysical Research Letters. 47(14)

Metadata

Click on the dots to popup the metadata for each location.

The Mean Springs Tidal Range was calculated from the tidal constituents as:

MSTR = 2*(M2 + S2 + K1 + O1).

The tidal constituents are extracted from the FES2014 Global tide model described in:
Carrere L., F. Lyard, M. Cancet, A. Guillot, N. Picot: FES 2014, a new tidal model - Validation results and perspectives for improvements, presentation to ESA Living Planet Conference, Prague 2016.

Click on the dots to popup the metadata for each location.

The Mean Deepwater Signicant Wave Height (Hsig) was calculated from the ERA5 reanalysis from ECMWF between 1979-2019.

Click on the dots to popup the metadata for each location.

The Relative Tidal Range (RTR) at each location is calculated as the ratio between the Mean Springs Tidal Range (MSTR) and the Significant Wave Height (Hsig).

This ratio can help determine whether a beach is:

  • Wave Dominated: RTR between 0 and 3
  • Tide Modified: RTR between 3 and 10
  • Tide Dominated: RTR between 10 and 50

Click on the dots to popup the metadata for each location.

This layer contains the number of images available on Google Earth Engine between 1984 and 2020 from the following collections:

  • Tier 1 Landsat 5, 7, 8 Top-of-Atmosphere
  • Tier 2 Landsat 5, 7, 8 Top-of-Atmosphere (not recommended for time-series analysis)
  • Sentinel-2 Level-1C Top-of-Atmosphere
Geometries (sandy beaches)

This layer contains the polygons used as region of interest to map shoreline changes with CoastSat.

Data Download


To download the geospatial layers:

   Download CoastSat Shorelines layer     
   Download CoastSat Transects layer     
   Download CoastSat Polygons layer     
   Download Pacific-wide Metadata layer     

To download the shoreline time-series manually:

You can download shoreline time-series manually by clicking on a beach and using the timeseries button. The beach-face slopes and long-term trends for each transect can be downloaded using the summary button.

To download the shoreline time-series via API:

The time-series are contained in .csv files with the first column containing the dates in UTC time and second column the cross-shore distance from the origin of the corresponding transect. They can be accessed for each transect programmatically with the following URL:

http://coastsat.wrl.unsw.edu.au/time-series/$TRANSECT_ID/

where $TRANSECT_ID is the id of the transect in the database.

For example:
http://coastsat.wrl.unsw.edu.au/time-series/aus0206-0003/

About this project



This data portal is provided for free to the community to explore and access coastal datasets. If you find the data useful and would like to support the associated cloud hosting costs, you are welcome to donate a coffee ❤️.

This webGIS application was initially developed by Kilian Vos as a PhD at UNSW's Water Research Laboratory. It has now been improved over many iterations and uses only open-source libraries (Django, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Leaflet).

The shoreline time-series provided here are computed using the open-source CoastSat toolbox in automatic mode and the FES2022 global tide model for applying a tidal correction. A copy of this dataset is archived in a Zenodo repository .

For any questions or requests for similar webGIS dashboards, contact Kilian Vos

To learn more about how satellite-derived shoreline time-series and beach slopes were computed, here is a list of useful publications:

Publication Link
Full description of the CoastSat toolbox (open-access) Vos et al. 2019b
Validation of satellite-derived shorelines against in situ surveys Vos et al. 2022, Vos et al. 2019a, Konstantinou et al. 2023, Castelle et al. 2021
Beach-face slopes from satellite-derived shorelines Vos et al. 2020, Vos et al. 2022
Pacific-wide analysis of satellite-derived shorelines and ENSO Vos et al. 2023
USGS Data release for National Coastal Hazard Assessment USGS data release


Acknowledgement to partner institutions: