COASTAL TOPOGRAPHY DATA ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION AT ASSATEAGUE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE

Assateague Island National Seashore’s (ASIS) coastal topography has been regularly monitored for the past 25 years in order to understand the barrier island sediment budget and to manage cultural and natural park resources and infrastructure. ASIS topographic profiles have been measured annually in the spring and fall along 33 established transects since 1995, resulting in a dataset of over 55,000 point measurements. Data analysis and visualization is necessary for communicating long-term trends to park management; however, manual processing of the complete dataset requires an infeasible amount of time and effort.

In this project, geoprocessing tools were developed using the Python programming language and ESRI ArcGIS Pro software to calculate cross-sectional area and plot two-dimensional figures of individual topographic profiles. A web application was developed using ArcGIS Dashboards to display spatial and temporal variation of cross-sectional area values. These tools can successfully process ASIS’s complete coastal topography dataset and produce cross-sectional area and topographic profile outputs in a reasonable timeframe. Additionally, the web application displays cross-sectional area values for ASIS’s complete coastal topography dataset and is available to park staff and expected to be made available to the public in the future.