The EPA Coastal Elevation Data Set

Here you can download most of the EPA coastal elevation data set for the Atlantic Coast. The Mid-Atlantic portion of that data set was created to answer one of four "key questions" for a report entitled "Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise" by the United States Climate Change Science Program (now called USGCRP). The resulting analysis and elevation maps were published in the February 2008 draft of that report. As reported elsewhere, the maps were removed from the final version of the report for reasons unrelated to the quality of the analysis, at the request of a senior CCSP official.

A similar dataset was created for the rest of the Atlantic Coast using the National Elevation Dataset but otherwise following similar procedures so that elevations are expressed relative to spring high water, with the similar caveat that tidal wetland elevations should be disregarded. The EPA sea level rise planning study used those data.

If you are not sure whether you want this data, you may want to start by looking at the maps, reading the metadata, and examining the Titus and Wang paper in the EPA background report. The elevation data set for Florida is somewhat larger than that of the other states, so we are not currently making it available here. If you need that data as well, we suggest you contact EPA. Just click on that link and then type your request into the white box called "*Question". The DVDs that EPA sends also include the sea level rise planning data .

Metadata

New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland District of Columbia Virginia

Mid-Atlantic: Zipped files with coastal elevation data and supplemental metadata

New York
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Delaware
Maryland
District of Columbia
Virginia
North Carolina

Zipped files with additional metadata

two methods papers
supplements to the supplemental metadata

Data for Other Atlantic States

Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
South Carolina
Georgia

That old Titus and Richman (2001) data set

The data from Maps of Lands Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise (148 MB) are also available here. Please see the EPA web site for the journal article, maps, and caveats associated with this study.