NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) – Hosted by CIESIN at Columbia University

Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ)

Introduction

Country-level estimates of urban, rural and total population and land area in a low elevation coastal zone (LECZ) were generated globally using Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) alpha population and land area data products and a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) derived from Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) remote sensing data.

The zone was derived from the DEM by selecting all land contiguous with the coast that was 10 meters or less in elevation. Zonal statistics were generated for urban, rural and total population and land area for the country as a whole and within the LECZ.

All grids—population, land area, urban mask and LECZ—are at 1 km (30 arc-second) resolution. The SRTM dataset used came from ISciences; the GRUMP data were developed by CIESIN.

Follow-up analyses using higher resolution data for local estimates are currently being performed. Preliminary results for New York City are available in the map gallery.