ShoreZone talk on Friday discusses coastal mapping

The leaders of a high-tech coastal mapping project offer a community presentation from 1-4 p.m. Friday at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center. The ShoreZone Partnership gathers information on the biology and geology of coastal areas and makes maps to share the information with the public. Its main tools, aerial photography and video, are collected from a helicopter flying the shoreline at low tide. Coastal geologists and biologists onboard the helicopter describe the terrain and vegetation they see. Together the images and narration help the ShoreZone mappers classify and map the coast.

Since ShoreZone launched in Alaska as a private-public partnership in 2001, the program has now covered 85 percent of the state’s 43,750 miles of coastline. This summer, ShoreZone’s scientists are surveying shorelines in the Eastern Aleutian Islands, Barren Islands and the Alaska Peninsula.  

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