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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration logo NOAA Shoreline National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) Shoreline

ENC shoreline covers navigable waters and accurately depicts the tidally influenced shoreline, including waterways and tidal creeks, since it corresponds to the black line seen on the nautical charts.

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Coverage

Continental U.S., including Alaska, the Great Lakes, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other U.S. trust territories and Caribbean and Pacific islands.

Source Data

NOAA nautical charts

Tidal Datum

Mean high water (MHW)

Scale

Variable scale based on charts with 1:10,000 to 1:80,000 scales

Spatial Reference

Geographic coordinate system; horizontal datum – North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83).

Accuracy

Nautical charts are updated as part of an ongoing process to create a cartographic representation of the best available data collected over the years, employing a variety of data collection technology and techniques and provided to the Office of Coast Survey using many scales, datums, and projections. Although technology has allowed for a drastic increase in positional accuracy, historical data have not been superseded for many areas. The data accuracy of the extracted vector products is checked against its source nautical chart only. It is in no way intended for navigational purposes.

Process Description

The NOAA ENC database has been built from a combination of charted information and original "source" information. NOAA has compiled critical features such as channel limits, aids to navigation, and obstructions from the original documents that were used to put the features on the paper chart. The objective is to use the most accurate information for features that are critical to the safety of navigation. NOAA uses a number of sources in compiling NOAA ENCs, including U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveys, drawings, and permits, U.S. Coast Guard Local Notices to Mariners, National Imagery and Mapping Agency Notices to Mariners, NOAA hydrographic surveys, and the largest scale paper chart of an area. ENC Direct to GIS data were created by transforming Approach and Harbor, Coastal, General, Overview, and NOAA ENC version 2 cells to ESRI's shapefile format using Safe Software's Feature Manipulation Engine. The ENC shoreline corresponds to the black line (approximate mean high water) seen on the nautical charts.

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