Overview

Coastal resources are increasingly affected by climate change hazards. The U.S. Geological Survey, in partnership with the National Park Service through the Natural Resource Preservation Program, developed the Coastal Change Likelihood (CCL) assessment to determine the future likelihood of coastal change along U.S. coastlines in the next decade.

The Coastal Change Likelihood (CCL) assessment synthesizes over 20 existing datasets from a variety of federal, state, and private organizations to describe the landscape and the hazards that may affect it to evaluate the likelihood of coastal change along U.S. coastlines on a decadal scale.

The assessment utilizes datasets that describe the coastal landscape, or fabric, and six common coastal hazards—erosion, storm frequency, relative sea level rise, tidal flooding, storm overwash probability, and wave power. A supervised machine learning framework is used to synthesize the fabric and hazard data to estimate the likelihood of coastal change in the coming decade.

The CCL outcomes can be used as a first order planning tool to determine which areas of the coast are more likely to change in response to future potential coastal hazards, and to examine elements and drivers that make change in a given location more likely. CCL works to:

• Provide foundational datasets.
• Support decision making.
• Highlight areas where change is more and less likely.
• Define areas where change is uncertain.
• Illustrate the complexity of coastal change.