Mapping Michigan's historical coastlines

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2025

Department

Great Lakes Research Center

Abstract

A recently completed study has created and documented the first comprehensive compilation of spatio-temporal shoreline change for a significant portion of Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior with historical snapshots dating back to 1938. In total, more than 4100 km was mapped at sufficient fidelity to allow resolution at the individual property owner level, allowing property owners, communities, regional managers and planners as well as regulatory agencies to directly observe not only natural changes to shorelines, but also anthropogenic impacts associated with shoreline hardening. Products produced by this study are publicly accessible via a geospatial data portal, and include historical aerial photography mosaics, historical shoreline and bluff line positions, long-term shoreline rate of change analysis input and outputs, and an interactive web-based viewer incorporating these products with other complementary datasets. Long-term rate of change analyses found that while some areas of Lakes Michigan and Huron exhibited isolated rates of recession greater than 1 m-per-year (m/yr), the majority of the shorelines were stable over the 82 years analyzed, with Lake Superior exhibiting the most stability (85 %), followed by Lake Huron (65 %), while Lake Michigan exhibited the lowest percentage of stable shorelines (52 %). Additionally, analysis of short-term rates-of-change shows the potential to detect shoreline hardening based on the variance between a transect's short-term and long-term rates-of-change.

Publication Title

Journal of Great Lakes Research

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