SCRIPT FOR SHOREZONE ONLINE TUTORIAL
PART 1 Introduction to ShoreZone: Overview, Methodology and Definitions
Revision June 4, 2010
Slide Script
1 - Title
1a –
Acknowledgements
2 - Outline
Welcome to the online ShoreZone tutorial. The following series of four videos have been prepared to introduce viewers to the
ShoreZone program.
The tutorial was prepared for The Nature Conservancy’s Juneau office and was compiled from presentations made by the
ShoreZone team at several recent workshops and webinars.
Thank you to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and to the
Nature Conservancy for the funding for this project.
3 – key contacts
Part 1 of the tutorial provides an overview and introduction to
ShoreZone, including showing the methodology used to collect and compile the dataset. Example attributes and maps are also shown.
Key contacts for ShoreZone include NOAA staff in Juneau, The
Nature Conservancy, Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the Cook Inlet RCAC, where Sue Saupe was instrumental in bringing ShoreZone to Alaska where work started in the Cook Inlet region in 2001.
4 – Partners In addition to the core ShoreZone team in Alaska, many agencies and groups have contributed to the program, both with funding image collection and mapping and with in kind support. ShoreZone was developed in British Columbia and continues to have wide support by many other groups throughout BC and Washington.
5 – Coastal
America Award
In 2009, the ShoreZone Alaska team was the proud recipient of the
Coastal America Spirit Award. This national award is in recognition of the team’s work towards restoring and preserving coastal ecosystems and addressing critical environmental issues.
6 – SZ definition So what is ShoreZone? ShoreZone is a coastal habitat mapping system that characterizes physical and biological resources of the shoreline. Key features are:
•
georeferenced imagery
•
georeferenced data
•
searchable database
7 – Standardized mapping system
8 – where is SZ
Within the standardized mapping system, aspects of coastal habitats are classified and mapped. These include wave exposure, geomorphic features, description of sediment, supratidal, intertidal and nearshore biota, and man-made features.
ShoreZone data have been completed for the state of Washington

9 – map of NW
Pacific
10 – coastal imagery
11 – imagery is data
12 – from imagery to maps
13 – trackline
14 – digital shoreline and for the entire shoreline of BC. As of summer 2010, ShoreZone in Alaska has completed nearly two-thirds of the Alaska coast and more flying and mapping is underway. This means that almost
100,000 km of contiguous coastline has been mapped – from the
Columbia River mouth to Bristol Bay, Alaska.
The red coastline here in the northeast Pacific shows where
ShoreZone data has been collected. In the summer of 2010, the
Kuiu Island area in central southeast Alaska is scheduled for imaging, which will complete the imagery collection for all of
Southeast except for the Wilderness Area in Glacier Bay.
Imagery is collected specifically for the use in ShoreZone interpretation and mapping. Helicopter is used for most areas although fixed wing has been done in areas of long of straight shoreline. Flights are low elevation of usually less than 200m.
Imagery is oblique and both video and still images are recorded, and are georeferenced using GPS positioning. All surveys take place during summer low tides. A synchronous narration on separate audio tracks, by both the geologist/videographer and biologist are also recorded with the video.
The imagery collected forms the basis for the dataset. In a typical aerial survey, about 1,500 km of shoreline is imaged during the low tide, with about two dozen hours of video tape recorded. Here’s the extent of shoreline flown in the July 2009 which was based in
Kake. Each different color on the map is a different tape. Tapes and still imagery are catalogued and archived, and are delivered to
ShoreZone partners.
ShoreZone imagery is turned into mappable data by specially trained coastal habitat mappers, following a standard protocol. GIS and geomorphic classification is done first, and then biological attributes are mapped.
During the low tide flights, the survey is planned to include all shoreline, giving a complete image record for the shoreline.
Circling islets in complex archipelago can be a test for even the strongest stomachs. Each dot on the flightline is a one-second GPS fix from the position of the aircraft.
Using the flightline and with a digital shoreline supplied by the client, the physical mapper reviews the imagery and segments the shoreline into alongshore UNITs, and marks the Unit breaks on the map. Each Unit is assigned a unique identifier number, called the
PHY IDENT short for ‘physical identifier’. The alongshore unit is the fundamental spatial reference for the mapped data in
ShoreZone. All data in the spatial database are referenced to the
Unit segment.

15 – Unit 688 Let me describe further how Units are first broken out along the shore and how data attributes are assigned to the unit. First the physical mapper determines the location of the natural high water line, corresponding to the basemap’s shoreline, and shown here with the black dashed line. Then an alongshore segment is marked off, representing a section with similar geomorphic features and wave aspect. A unique Unit number is assigned (688 in this example). Three adjacent units are separated from 688 based on different aspect or geomorphology.
16 – XShr of 688
We’ll zoom in on Unit 688, and show how the physical mapper describes the Across-shore features within the unit, as if describing
17 – biobands a typical transect across the shoreline from the splashzone to the nearshore subtidal. Descriptive codes for geomorphic features are recorded in the database. For example, the mapper describes the lower intertidal in this Unit as a low-tide terrace, composed of sand-mud substrate.
Once the physical mapper has segmented the digital shoreline into units and filled out their parts of the database, the biological mapper reviews all the imagery and the unit data and uses that as a framework to attach biological attributes for each unit. In this example, the biomapper has described the dune grass in the beach berm, rockweed on the beach face and eelgrass and soft brown kelps on the lower intertidal.
18 – database view The resulting database is a systematic and descriptive record of the biophysical features for each unit. Some attributes describe the whole unit, and other details describes the ‘within’ unit details of the across-shore data.
19 – geospatial database
20 – biobands
21 – biobands in protected
22 – biological wave exposure
23 – Protected
The resulting geospatial dataset has coastal attributes in the database associated with specific shoreline units, referenced by
‘physical identifier’ unit number unique to each unit. The average unit length is between 3 and 400 meters.
A key biological attribute is the ‘bioband’, which is the term used in ShoreZone to describe alongshore patterns formed by biota which can be seen from the air. Each bioband is defined by an assemblage of species which has a typical colour, texture and elevation in the across-shore.
Here’s a typical assemblage of biobands on a cobble beach, showing along shore pattern of different colours and textures of species assemblages. Note the small sized features, the clumps of blue mussels, visible in the Rockweed band.
Because intertidal species have known tolerance to wave energy conditions, the presence or absence of combinations of biobands are used an index for the site’s energy. Six biological wave exposure categories are described in ShoreZone, ranging from Very
Exposed at the highest to Very Protected at the lowest energy.
From the combination of biobands the biomapper observes, a

24 – Exposed
25 – Biobands in
AK
26 and 27 – SE
SUR and ZOS
28 – Sitka wave energy map
29 thru 32 – ZOS in PWS
33 – derived classes biological wave exposure category is assigned to each unit. In this example a typical combination of biobands in the Protected category is observed: with Rockweed and Barnacle biobands in the upper intertidal, and sparse Soft Brown Kelps in the nearshore subtidal. Wave energy category within a shore unit is a very useful piece of information about the site and, together with the substrate category, the shore unit’s overall habitat characteristics can be inferred.
On this exposed shore unit, a very different pattern of bioband presence and absence is observed. This information about coastal habitats can in turn be used to assist with planning spill response, assessing coastal sensitivities or other coastal zone planning models.
Approximately two dozen biobands have been described in Alaska.
Some are strong indicators of certain wave exposures and coastal habitats while other bands are more widely distributed. Remember that each band should always be thought of as representing an assemblage of species, even if it might be named for a single species.
Here’s an example of how the difference between wave exposure tolerance between Surfgrass and Eelgrass appears when mapped in the Sitka region. Zooming in on small area near Kruzoff Island, surfgrass is shown in red and eelgrass in green. Note that the surfgrass occurs throughout the outer coast but it was not mapped in sheltered bays, while the occurrence of eelgrass is the opposite pattern and it is found only in sheltered inlets and bays.
Here’s a map of wave exposure categories mapped for roughly the same area of Kruzoff Island. Note how the distribution of surfgrass corresponds to the higher exposure sites on south Kurzoff and where the ocean swells reach into the bay towards Sitka. Eelgrass was mapped only in lower exposures.
The distribution of the Eelgrass bioband is a proxy for the highly valued nearshore eelgrass community. This map shows the eelgrass bioband distribution in all of Prince William Sound. Because
ShoreZone mapping is based on Units which are a few hundred meters in length, the resolution of the mapped data improves as you zoom in. Individual video or still photo frames for the Unit can be reviewed as well. Note that these types of data are readily available online and examples for how to use the website are presented in
Part 2 of the tutorial.
Several derived or ‘classified’ attributes for each unit are coded in the dataset. We have already talked about the biological wave exposure categories. The Coastal Class attribute is assigned by the physical mapper, to summarize the detail of the geomorphic features in the unit. Similarly the Habitat Class is assigned by the biological mapper, based on the geomorphic features together with

34 – map of ORI in
Haida Gwaii
35 – example of short duration ORI
36 – example of long duration ORI the wave exposures. Another derived attribute in each unit is the
OIL RESIDENCE INDEX and I will explain that attribute further.
Definitions for all ShoreZone attributes are available in downloadable protocol and summary reporting documents from the
NOAA ShoreZone website.
The Oil residence index or ORI is determined from the unit’s substrate permeability category and the wave exposure category.
The five-point scale has ‘1’ for the shortest predicted duration of days to Weeks, shown on the map in Yellow, and ‘5’ for the longest duration of months to Years, shown on the map here in
Black. The shortest duration is on impermeable substrate and high energy sites, with the longest duration scores predicted for permeable, low energy sites.
An impermeable, high energy unit such as this one would be assigned a short duration ORI of days to weeks.
A permeable cobble/boulder beach with low wave energy, such as this beach, would be assigned a long duration ORI index of months to years.
37 – coastal habitats
38 – summary part
1
The coastal habitat attributes mapped in ShoreZone are suitable for many habitat management decision making tools, such as: assessment of wildlife habitat suitability, modeling essential fish habitat, development permit siting, and planning for spill sensitivity and response.
In summary, the ShoreZone system is based on interpretation of low-tide, low altitude, high resolution aerial imagery, with a mapped, searchable dataset of geomorphic and biological attributes. From the imagery and mapped data, a summary is webposted making the data widely accessible. In Part 2 of the tutorial, examples of using the The NOAA ShoreZone website are presented.
39 – key contacts
Here’s the address for the ShoreZone website, along with contact information for ShoreZone related questions. Steve Lewis at
NOAA is responsible for web development and Laura Baker at the
Nature Conservancy helps coordinate the overall program.