The Alaska Shore Database GIS support files from 1980-01-01 to 2023-01-01 (NCEI Accession 0292741)

The Alaska Shore Database is a set of three spatial data sets: ShoreZone, Shore Station and the Nearshore Fish Atlas.

Alaska ShoreZone: The ShoreZone mapping system has been in use since the early 1980s and has been applied to more than 120,000 km of shoreline in Alaska, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. As of 2018, approximately 94% of the state has ShoreZone imagery and of the area imaged approximately 98% is mapped. This project has been funded by NOAA and a number of other agencies and organizations throughout the years.

This standardized system catalogs both geomorphic and biological resources at mapping scales of better than 1:10,000. The high resolution, attribute-rich dataset is a useful tool for extrapolation of site data over broad spatial ranges for creating a variety of habitat models and oil spill response tools.

Low tide, oblique aerial imagery sets this system apart from other mapping efforts. You can "fly the coastline" (aerial video), view and download still photos, and access physical and biological data using our interactive website. Power users can download the entire ShoreZone geodatabase.

Alaska Shore Station Database: The Alaska Shore Station Database is a compilation of data collected since 2002 during low tide surveys from hundreds of intertidal sites throughout the coastal waters of Alaska. Shore station survey data include observed species and their assemblages, geomorphic features such as sediment substrates and forms, beach length, slope and specific elevation profiles, and station photo documentation.

The Alaska Shore Station provides detail to the attributes described in the Alaska ShoreZone coastal habitat mapping website. The Alaska ShoreZone and Shore Station data are not meant to be compared, as the two products utilize different scales and levels of detection. The shore station data provide more insight into the regional differences among habitats by adding descriptive detail to the definitions of shoreline habitats that were classified from the aerial surveys.

Due to the expense of accessing many of Alaska’s remote coastal areas, shore station data were often collected opportunistically and, thus, the sites were not selected in a statistically random manner. However, every attempt was made to choose sites that encompassed the range of observed coastal habitats and wave exposures.

The Shore Station Database Provides:

* Biophysical data such as bioband locations, sediment textures, species compositions, geomorphic features, across-shore profiles, and photo documentation at sites.

* Detailed invertebrate and algal species lists that can be assembled for specific sites or at larger geographic scales.

* Species data reported on a categorical, semi-quantitative scale that can be used to illustrate potential differences in algal and invertebrate communities among different habitats and geographic areas.

* Observations that were recorded according to a standard protocol and that are specifically georeferenced within the hierarchical system of the ShoreZone mapping program.

* Information that is useful for describing ShoreZone classifications by way of illustrating different species assemblages found within ‘biobands’ reported from different habitats and regions.

* Data from hundreds of stations visited throughout the Gulf of Alaska, including Southeast, Prince William Sound, the outer Kenai Peninsula, the Kodiak Island archipelago, Cook Inlet, and the Katmai National Park coast.

The Nearshore Fish Atlas: The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1996 requires the identification of essential fish habitat (EFH) for species included in federal fishery management plans (FMPs). Identifying EFH requires basic information on fish distribution and habitat use. For many FMPs in Alaska, EFH information is limited, especially for early life stages of fish found in nearshore habitats. One of the challenges for understanding EFH in Alaska’s nearshore is the extensive and complex coastline (~55,000 km) with a wide diversity of estuarine and marine habitats including fiords, bays, channels, and straits.

NOAA Fisheries Alaska Regional Office and Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Auke Bay Laboratories designed the interactive, online Nearshore Fish Atlas of Alaska (NFA) to provide access to available data on the distribution, relative abundance, and habitat use of nearshore fishes in Alaska. This spatially explicit and searchable platform is a unified database of numerous nearshore catch datasets collected by various agencies and organizations in Alaska over the past several decades. The NFA has tools for extensive querying and filtering in addition to downloading fully attributed data. The compiled datasets are from dozens of studies with different objectives and gear types (e.g., beach seines, purse seines, and trawls).

A key function of the NFA is to provide a centralized location for researchers and the public to conduct desktop reconnaissance and acquire a wealth of data. Ultimately, the information housed in the NFA helps resource managers prepare biological opinions and identify habitats essential to different life stages of commercially and ecologically important fish species in Alaska’s nearshore.