There are 6 datasets total that together represent sediment placement in the North and Mid-Atlantic: Proposed Sediment Placement (points, lines, and polygons) and Sediment Placement (points, lines, and polygons).These data are part of a broader project: Inventory of Habitat Modifications to Sandy Oceanfront Beaches in the U.S. Atlantic Coast Breeding Range of the Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) as of 2015: Maine to North Carolina.

An estimate of the length of sandy oceanfront beaches that have received or continue to receive sediment placement from Maine through North Carolina was compiled. Only ocean-facing shorelines or those directly exposed to Long Island Sound or the Peconic Estuary were included in this project area; inner harbors and bays were excluded, for a total length of sandy beaches of 1,742 miles from Maine to North Carolina. Sediment placement projects include beach fill or nourishment, artificial dune construction using fill material, inlet closure, and dredge disposal placement projects. The locations of sediment placement projects constructed as of 2015 were identified and delineated with a series of red lines in a Google Earth data layer (with thicker lines representing projects that received sediment in the three years after Hurricane Sandy). In this way, overlapping project areas could be identified. Each area of beach that has received sediment placement is counted only once, even if the site has repeatedly been modified by sediment placement, since the goal was to measure the spatial area of modification. Overlapping project areas were counted only once. Proposed sediment placement project areas were delineated with sky blue lines. Where project data were insufficient to identify precise project boundaries of sediment placement projects, red points (rather than lines) were delineated within the overall project area. Project details and lengths of modified beaches (with known boundaries) were recorded in Microsoft Excel.

Published sources including peer-reviewed literature, government agency reports and permits, were used to compile the lengths of shoreline affected by beach nourishment and dredge disposal placement activities in each state. Where readily available published sources were absent for a geographic area, the beach nourishment database of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines (at http://beachnourishment.wcu.edu) was consulted and an inventory of projects in that region was added to the Excel database. All digitizing was completed by a single GIS analyst.