DATA: GLOBAL COASTLINE V1 (ISciences)
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Where, exactly, is land's end? As global warming creates climate refugees by forcing islanders to the mainland, the question of where land ends and sea begins becomes increasingly important to humans and other coastal inhabitants. ISciences' new Global Coastline v1 is a global coastline dataset at 1 arc-sec (approximately 30m at the equator) that blends, corrects, and fills voids in several well-known datasets to create a global coastline mask (polygon) as well as a global coastline outline (vector).

In the image at right three coastline data vectors have been overlaid on an image from NaturalVue (MDA Federal) that shows a tiny island off the west coast of Sumatra. The yellow outline, Global Coastline v1 from ISciences, aligns closely with the NaturalVue image, while the VMAP0 (cyan) and World Vector Shoreline (red) outlines do not. White is predominately cloud cover. Notice, also, that both VMAP0 and World Vector Shoreline show the island as a solid land mass, while Global Coastline v1 accurately traces the coastline of the surrounding ringlike land at the north and south, defined by ocean inlets.

For more about the creation of this dataset see Data Story.
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