Canadian Coastal Information System (CIS) - Ice, Beaufort Sea Coast 1984, 1999 and 2000

Shore-zone classification data for the Canadian Beaufort Sea coast form part of a GIS database, the Coastal Information System (CIS), developed and maintained by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC-Atlantic), Natural Resources Canada, at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, NS. Coastal attributes in the CIS have been interpreted and mapped from low-level, oblique, aerial photography and video imagery with accompanying audio commentary. The CIS is hierarchical in that coastal forms are classified based on four increasingly detailed levels of description. The coastal data consist of line segments with attributes describing the physical form and material at scales ranging from 1:10 000 to 1:250 000. In the CIS, the coast is divided into three shore-parallel zones (backshore, foreshore, nearshore). Each zone is segmented separately based on homogeneous physical characteristics. A glossary has been developed to control the language used to describe each zone. The use of objective physical criteria for coastal classification enhances the utility of the CIS for a wide variety of applications. Because of their potential importance in coastal stability, ice features exposed in any of the three shore-parallel zones (backshore, foreshore, nearshore) are mapped in a separate layer. These features may be various forms of ground ice or sea ice. Typical ice features include massive ice and ice wedges within permafrost, or accumulations of drift ice in the shore zone. Many of the ice features are further characterized by ice content. For more information please refer to the datafile entitled: CCIN12122_20150218_Ice_Extended_Metadata_FGDC.xml