Ecological Coastal Units (ECUs)
Description
The Ecological Coastal Units resource was produced by the U.S. Geological Survey and Esri in a collaboration with the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). A 30 m resolution global shoreline vector (GSV) that was produced from a semi-automated interpretation of every 2014 Landsat scene that contained a coastline was segmented into 4,000,000 one kilometer segments. Each of the four million segments was then attributed with values from ten variables that describe the ecological setting within which the coastline occurs. As a global inventory of coastline characteristics, 81,000 distinct coastal segment units (CSUs) were identified as unique combinations of the values of the ten ecological settings variables. The four million segments were also statistically clustered to produce 16 groups of coastline types that were globally similar. These clustered groups were called ecological coastal units (ECUs). The CSU and ECU data now permit rigorous comparison of coastal settings within and between sites at local, regional, national, continental, and global scales. . In addition to the data, the Ecological Coasdtal Units GEO Knowledge Hub also contains other knowledge products (publications, online explorer tools, etc.) related to the ECUs and CSUs resource.