Maine partners update shoreline maps for coastal planning

NOAA said on Wednesday 04 November 2026 that the Maine Geological Survey, Maine Sea Grant, and the University of Maine engineering group updated shoreline maps to improve coastal planning across the state.

The agency said updated and accurate shoreline maps are critical for Maine planners because bluffs comprise 48 percent of the state’s 5,000-mile coastline. The maps also provide information needed to plan, design, and permit resilient shoreline protection systems.

Many existing maps are over 20 years old and lack current information on development, erosion, and bluff stability. NOAA said coastal managers need detailed data about the forces affecting shorelines to support planning and resilient shoreline protection systems.

The partners combined remote-sensing data with NOAA’s land cover and Coastal Ocean Reanalysis (CORA) data to establish consistent, continuous data across the coastal zone. They used these sources to increase the precision and accuracy of new coastal bluff maps and improve other decision-support tools.

The partners extracted mean wave direction and significant wave height data from CORA to determine wave energy patterns along Maine’s entire coastline. NOAA said the analysis established a baseline for understanding wave dynamics and variability.

The wave data will be included in a new version of the Maine Geological Survey’s Living Shorelines Decision Support Tool. NOAA said this will enable more precise metrics when planning for living shorelines and support hazard assessments and resilience planning efforts.