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Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Sea-level Rise Scenarios and Models 2010-2015

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2020-08-27T00:00:00Z
This data release consists of two ESRI geodatabases that store inundation areas for various future scenarios of sea-level rise (SLR), groundwater rise, and storm waves for Laysan Island and Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Five types of inundation scenarios are considered: (1) passive SLR, (2) passive SLR including groundwater rise, (3) wave-driven inundation during storm events, (4) wave-driven inundation during storm events including groundwater rise, and (5) wave-driven inundation during storm events, assuming unlimited seawater volumes and no infiltration (i.e., theoretical maximum). This scenario applies only to Laysan Island which has topographic depressions that fill with water during flood events. For each of these scenarios, five different levels of SLR are considered: 0.00 m, +0.50 m, +1.00 m, +1.50 m, and +2.00 m. We considered each scenario at mean high water in order to predict inundation during the more damaging part of the tidal range. Each of the above types of inundation have their own feature dataset within the geodatabase, named as follows: (1) Passive, (2) PassiveGW, (3) WaveDriven, (4) WaveDrivenGW, and (5) WaveDriven_TheoreticalMax (applies to Laysan Island only). Each of these feature datasets contains five feature classes labeled in a manner that indicates the SLR scenario under consideration. For instance, within the dataset "Passive", there are five feature classes: Passive_SLR_00cm, Passive_SLR_50cm, Passive_SLR_100cm, Passive_SLR_150cm, and Passive_SLR_200cm.

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