CanCoast 2.0: data and indices to describe the sensitivity of Canada's marine coasts to changing climate

CanCoast is a collection of datasets that describe the physical characteristics of Canada’s marine coasts, and used to calculate a coastal sensitivity index for Canada’s coasts.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Creator G.K. Manson, N.J. Couture, and T.S. James
Summary Baseline mapping of coastal characteristics and understanding of the dynamic response of coastal sensitivity to environmental changes provide a strong foundation for climate change adaptation in Canada’s coastal regions. CanCoast is a collection of datasets that describe the physical characteristics of Canada’s marine coasts. It includes datasets that are not expected to change through time (such as coastal materials and backshore slope), and some that are projected to change as climate changes (such as wave height and mean sea level). CanCoast includes: sea-level change (early and late 21st century); wave-heights including the effects of sea ice (early and late 21st century); ground ice content; coastal materials; tidal range; and backshore slope. These are mapped to a common high-resolution shoreline and used to calculate indices that show the generalised coastal sensitivity of Canada’s marine coasts in early and late 21st century climates, and the spatially-variable change in sensitivity between the early and the late 21st century. Because of the scales of the input data, the generalised indices are best used to identify regions that differ in sensitivity to changing climate, rather than local properties or coastal infrastructure with specific characteristics that cannot be resolved in this national-scale approach.
Local Relevance This report and associated datasets describe the sensitivity of Canada's coasts, including Canada's northern coast in the NWT.
Notes This is GSC Open File 8551
Tags Coast,Coastal Sensitivity Index,Marine,Dataset
Geographic Region Beaufort Delta
Release Date 2019-01-01
Last Modified Date 2019-01-01
Funding Program