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Center for Coastal Resources Management

Locality Portal Dataset Explanations

Before you launch over to your individual Locality Portal, take a moment to understand the following types of information that are found on your page, including:

This Portal contains a comprehensive set of resources to support your planning needs. The brief descriptions below provide guidance on the purpose and use of each resource. After selecting your Locality Portal, you can navigate directly to the appropriate materials for your planning analysis.

For assistance, please contact ccrminfo@vims.edu.

Mapping Tools

These are interactive map viewers with the most recent information about shoreline and coastal conditions (best viewed on large screens).

  • Virginia Coastal Resources Tool: View shoreline conditions and best management practices by locality or river system using an interactive coastal webmap and dashboards.
  • Locality Road Flood Tool: For incorporating road flooding into locality planning efforts, particularly roadway infrastructure resiliency and flooding adaptation needs. Demonstrates where roadways will flood during various categories of storm events (hurricanes), plus storm surge and sea level rise factors over time.
  • AdaptVA Interactive Map: Sea-level rise forecasts, social vulnerability, infrastructure, and natural capital in one viewer.

Shoreline and Tidal Marsh Inventories

VIMS Center for Coastal Resources Management is a recognized global leader in the science and technology of shoreline and tidal marsh inventories. Over decades of conducting inventories in the Chesapeake Bay region, we have developed several advanced data collection and analysis techniques. Our work informs the management and protection of shoreline areas and tidal marshes throughout the Chesapeake Bay.

Tidal Marsh Inventory

The Tidal Marsh Inventory, developed by VIMS CCRM, provides the most comprehensive mapped information on tidal marshes and their dominant plant communities in Virginia. Tidal marshes are critical coastal habitats that support water quality, shoreline stability, flood protection, fish and wildlife habitat, and coastal resilience. The inventory documents where tidal marshes occur and provides information that can support coastal planning, restoration, conservation, and management decisions.

About the Inventory: The Tidal Marsh Inventory identifies and maps tidal marsh areas using aerial imagery, field observations, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), remote sensing, and other available data.

How the Data Are Used:

  • Identifying and documenting tidal marsh resources
  • Supporting shoreline management and resilience planning
  • Informing restoration and conservation priorities
  • Providing baseline information for evaluating coastal change
  • Supporting local, regional, and state decision-making
  • Improving public access to coastal resource information

Accessing Data: The Virginia Coastal Resources Tool provides visualization of shoreline and tidal marsh inventory data and related statistics. Tidal marsh inventory can also be downloaded through ScholarWorks.

Shoreline Inventory

Shoreline Inventory Summary Tables: Quantify observed conditions based on river systems, such as the combined length of linear features (e.g., shoreline miles surveyed, miles of bulkhead and revetment), the total number of point features (e.g., docks, boathouses, boat ramps), and total acres of polygon features (tidal marshes).

Shoreline Inventory Reports: In the 1970s, VIMS received a grant through the National Science Foundation's Research Applied to National Needs Program to develop a series of reports describing the condition of tidal shorelines across Virginia. Known as the Shoreline Situation Reports, they became a desktop staple for shoreline managers and planners. Today, CCRM routinely updates information on tidal shoreline condition in a revised series of reports called “Shoreline Inventory Reports” that address modern management questions using GIS, GPS, remote sensing, and AI models. The resulting digital geodatabases can be queried, visualized, and downloaded through the Virginia Coastal Resources Tool.

GIS Data Downloads

Downloadable GIS data layers of the most recent data displayed in the Virginia Coastal Resources Tool Map Viewer:

  • Shoreline and Tidal Marsh Inventory GIS Data
  • Shoreline Management Model (SMM) GIS Data: Model outputs guiding shoreline best management practices across Virginia.
  • Target Areas for the Creation of New or Restoration of Natural & Nature-Based Features in Coastal Virginia: An exportable geospatial protocol and NNBF ranking methodology developed to incentivize the protection and creation of NNBFs across Chesapeake Bay localities by highlighting multi-benefits, identifying target areas where new or restored NNBFs would benefit built infrastructure, and incorporating this information into online tools.
  • Areas Suitable for Living Shorelines - Ranked for Co-Benefits Provided: Prioritized areas suitable for non-structural plant marsh or plant marsh with sill recommendations, scored using nutrient removal potential, building protection benefits, habitat continuity, and resilience for socially vulnerable communities.

Other Shoreline Publications

Additional reports and management plans related to tidal shorelines produced by CCRM and/or the VIMS Shoreline Studies Program. These vary and are locality-specific.

General Guidance & Related Links

General guidance resources that are not locality-specific, written in a consumable format for all decision-makers, staff, and advisory boards (Wetlands and CBPA Boards, Planning Commissions). These resources support flooding and sea level rise adaptation, tide and flood forecasting, living shoreline design, and wetlands management.