Where to get usa coastline/shoreline data

Question

From where I can collect the USA coastline/shoreline data classified by name. I have the shoreline data but not classified. By classified I mean name of the coastline in different region. e.g. 'Pacific', 'Gulf', 'Great Lakes' ,'Caribe' ,'Caribbean' ,'Atlántico' ,'Atlantic', 'Arctic'

I have collected the tiger data that have those classification but it so much generalized as seen in the below image.

So I need detailed coastline/shoreline (may be USGS) with classification name.

Answer 1

There are actually a lot of sources for this, and some sources have multiple products.

This chart on NOAA breaks it down

These sites are pretty difficult to navigate, and I'm unsure of your application. Here is an overview:

• GSHHG - A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database. This is not the NOAA composite set, but it is the only download of the World Vector Shorelines (WVS), and it is what NOAA links to when you try to download them. WVS is produced by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The GSHHG is aggregated with the CIA World Data Bank II (WDBII) for political borders. The scale seems to be 1:250,000. One other important point, this dataset is distributed as polygons.
• Tiger Coastline nothing much to say about this. It's pretty low resolution.
• NOAA-NOS Composite Shoreline of the Continental United States. Derived from aerial imagery and raster T-sheets.
• Regional Data:
  • USGS GIS a huge basket of all kinds of data.
  • NOAA Continually Updated Shoreline Product (CUSP) this set has LIDAR data. As far as I can see, you have to download it from their little map tool called NOAA Shoreline Data Explorer by going Download → CUSP → By Region.

And, now for a map generated with a bunch of it...

Out of all those downloaded, the Tiger Coastline is the only one that aggregates the data with the name of the body of water it joins too. So you're going to have link it up with a better defined coastline.

Also of importance and not mentioned is the Natural Earth Coastline. This is non-governmental and covers the whole world with more accuracy of the TIGER Coastline (but substantially less accuracy than any of the other methods mentioned). For your project I would probably link this up to the TIGER Coastline. For reference, another fancy map...

Answer 2

This is just to share whereas you may benefit from it if needed. I found the data at last at NOAA Shoreline Data Explorer system.

So to my knowledge there are three versions of the usa coastaline data:

1. Tiger shapefile( super generalized gis data)
2. USGS data (GDB/Shapefile format)-something between 1 and 3.
3. NOAA data (to me most accurate)- link provided above.

Answer 3

Digital Coast by NOAA, is the NOAA's Office of Coastal Management, has that data, and much, much more, as Digital Coast is NOAA's authoritative data registry for coastal/shoreline data.