Shoreline Mapping

Since the late 1930s, high-resolution, georeferenced aerial photography for defining the nation's 95,000-mile shoreline has been a responsibility of the National Geodetic Survey, part of NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS). Precision aerial photography is the primary source material used for creating coastal survey maps and digital cartographic files. These data sets, in turn, provide data for producing NOAA nautical charts.