Coastal & Marine
The shoreline is a choice of datum, not a line on a map.
Coastal work breaks the assumptions the rest of GIS runs on: the boundary moves twice a day, depth is measured downwards from a surface that is itself a model, and the length of the coast depends on the ruler. These guides cover bathymetry grids and their sign conventions, tidal datums and which shoreline each one draws, shoreline change, coastal inundation that is not just a bathtub fill, distance to the coast at scale, exclusive economic zones, vessel tracks, and the antimeridian problems that come with all of it.
Start here
The cornerstone guide — the whole workflow end to end. Everything after it goes deeper into one part of it.
Step 1 Bathymetry explained: depths, datums and grids bathymetry explained Begin the path →The full path, in order
20 guides: the concepts underneath the work, then each task, then the errors that task produces. Work down, or jump to the step you need.
- Tidal datums explained: which shoreline is the shoreline tidal datum mllw mhhw 🧭 Concept
- The coastline paradox explained for GIS work coastline paradox gis 🧭 Concept
- Maritime boundaries explained: EEZ, territorial sea and baselines eez territorial sea explained 🧭 Concept
- Sea level rise data explained sea level rise data 🧭 Concept
- How to load and plot a bathymetry grid in Python load bathymetry python ⚙️ How-To
- How to extract a coastline from a raster in Python extract coastline raster python ⚙️ How-To
- How to measure shoreline change between two dates shoreline change analysis python ⚙️ How-To
- How to fetch and align tide gauge data in Python tide gauge data python ⚙️ How-To
- How to map coastal inundation from a DEM in Python coastal inundation mapping python ⚙️ How-To
- How to compute distance to the coast for many points distance to coast python ⚙️ How-To
- How to clip a dataset to an exclusive economic zone clip to eez python ⚙️ How-To
- How to clean AIS vessel tracks in Python clean ais data python ⚙️ How-To
- How to generate depth contours from bathymetry depth contours python ⚙️ How-To
- How to subset an ocean model NetCDF by depth and time ocean netcdf subset python ⚙️ How-To
- Bathymetry depths are positive in one file and negative in another bathymetry sign convention 🔧 Fix
- A coastline or EEZ breaks at the antimeridian antimeridian polygon problem 🔧 Fix
- An inundation map floods inland areas that cannot flood bathtub inundation wrong 🔧 Fix
- Tide times are off by hours after a join tide times wrong timezone 🔧 Fix
- AIS tracks jump across the world ais track jumps 🔧 Fix
Topics this path covers
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