Shoreline Change: Developing Predictive GIS Models

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

As part of the North Carolina Shorescapes project, AECOM determined shoreline change rates at 22 terrestrial archaeological sites in Tyrrell and Onslow Counties. Methodologies were based on the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and its 2019 study of annual erosion rates, which did not include many of the sites identified during the 2023 Shorescapes survey. AECOM utilized historic aerial imagery and LiDAR data from 2001, 2014, and 2019 to establish previous rates of erosion and used these data to develop predictive GIS models which project sea level change at high tide levels for the archaeological sites into 2025, 2035, and 2065. Predictive models were then used to support mitigation strategies and understanding the potential impact timeline.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bridging the Land and the Sea: Documenting and Assessing Climate Impacts on North Carolina’s Coastal Heritage   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow