Talk:List of U.S. states and territories by coastline

Map

Could a caption be added to the map explaining what the colors represent? It isn't very clear. If they are classes (ie, pink being a class with long coastlines, green one with somewhat less long coastlines etc), then perhaps a different color scheme would be more obvious? For example, shades of blue from dark to light. As it is, the colors seem random. Just an observation! Pfly 04:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added a caption and explained the measurement problem better. I'm not sure I'm in love with "The different colors have no significance", but they don't. It's just a four-color map thing. --Milkbreath 12:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah ha, thanks. After I wrote the above I realized the colors couldn't be classes, since Alaska and New Hampshire are both pink! Maybe if I find time and energy (hard to come by!), I'll see if I can make a classed map, and if it would be useful. Pfly 16:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Maine

Hi! I was wondering is the mileage on the state of Maine correct? At least on the map is sure does not show that Maine has that long coastline. Godzionu (talk) 06:13, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Where are the Great Lakes states (aside from New York)?

According to the NOAA, the Great Lakes states have coastlines as well. From http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/mystate/mi.html :

"With coastline on four Great Lakes, Michigan has the world's largest freshwater coastline." Phizzy (talk) 23:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

"Miles of Coast: 3,224

Coastal Population (2000): 4,460,981" Phizzy (talk) 23:15, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The Great Lakes aren't the only freshwater shorelines. To keep things interesting, what about other lakes and throw in rivers and you will get a much different result. Here is an interesting link: http://www.chrisfinke.com/2013/12/30/does-minnesota-really-have-more-shoreline-than-california/ Eroyce (talk) 13:58, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Two different data sources

The table is taken from a CRS report (as cited in the article), whereas the "Michigan Coastline" number is taken from the NOAA dataset (see the talk above). They are not comparable. For example, according to the CRS report (an reported in the table) Delaware has a coastline of 28 miles. On the other hand, the NOAA website lists Delaware having 381 miles of coastline.

According to the NOAA coastline data, Michigan is ninth, not second.

Perhaps adding a second column to the table or a second table would be useful. However, I'm afraid that it would just be confusing.

For completeness sake, I've included the two-column table below in order to show the difference. Note that I have also included the states with "no coastline".

State	Coastline from CRS [1]	Coastline from NOAA [2]
Alaska	6640	33904
Florida	1350	8436
Louisiana	397	7721
Maine	228	3478
California	840	3427
North Carolina	301	3375
Texas	367	3359
Virginia	112	3315
Michigan	0	3224
Maryland	31	3190
Washington	157	3026
South Carolina	187	2876
New York	127	2625
Georgia	100	2344
New Jersey	130	1792
Massachusetts	192	1519
Oregon	296	1410
Hawaii	750	1052
Wisconsin	0	820
Connecticut	96	618
Alabama	53	607
Rhode Island	40	384
Delaware	28	381
Mississippi	44	359
Ohio	0	312
Minnesota	0	189
Pennsylvania	0	140
New Hampshire	13	131
Illinois	0	63
Indiana	0	45
Arizona	0	0
Arkansas	0	0
Colorado	0	0
Idaho	0	0
Iowa	0	0
Kansas	0	0
Kentucky	0	0
Missouri	0	0
Montana	0	0
Nebraska	0	0
Nevada	0	0
New Mexico	0	0
North Dakota	0	0
Oklahoma	0	0
South Dakota	0	0
Tennessee	0	0
Utah	0	0
Vermont	0	0
West Virginia	0	0
Wyoming	0	0

Datandrews (talk) 18:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Title

I think the title should be changed to be more specific:

                                            "List of U.S. states by ocean coastline"

My reason is that I performed a websearch for "list of states by coastline" specifically to find out Michigan's rank in overall coastline. According to this article, Michigan doesn't rank, yet this article appeared at the top of the list of search results, even though this article refers only to ocean coastline.

The categories are:

• Overall (both fresh and salt water, including rivers and lakes)
• Saltwater or ocean
• Freshwater (including rivers and lakes)

Each article's title should accurately reflect the content. 68.42.172.14 (talk) 21:15, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Michigan and other states with Great Lake coastline are included in method 2 though not in method 1. Michigan is ranked 9th in this list. I have modified the inaccurate lead sentence which said it was only ocean coastline, and modified some of the other wording in the lead section to make this difference more clear. YBG (talk) 04:58, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Where's Texas? (№4)

Couldn't find this state — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.235.216.242 (talk) 08:23, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Texas shows in the background here, but not in the article itself. Chrisgreencar67 (talk) 03:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

It should be added - I tried, but the markup in that table is so convoluted that I kept screwing it up. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:17, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

ordering function is broken?

When I order Method I by rank, it puts Nos 3 , 4, 5, 6 ahead of Nos. 1 and 2 - something is broken. (Ordering them by coastline length, the order is fine except that it puts states with no coastline on top, above Alaska, which is counter-intuitive) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:30, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Methodology

I've been looking for a source that uses Method 1 (or something like it), but includes the Great Lakes. Method 2 may be scientifically useful, but its results are counter-intuitive to the usual understanding of coastline length. For example, indicating that Virginia or Maine has a longer coastline than the two peninsulas of Michigan doesn't match what you'd conclude from looking at a map of the US. Including tidal estuaries – which are not water as often as they are – inflates the figures for ocean coastlines compared to Great Lakes coastlines (which don't have noticeable tides). Measuring coastline in high resolution like Method 2 also inflates the figures for states with highly irregular coastlines (an example of the coastline problem), such as Georgia's 100-mile coast being measures as 2344 miles because of all its fiddly inlets, barrier islands, and the intracoastal waterway. The State of Michigan cites a statement in World Book that it has the second-longest coastline (after Alaska), but I haven't found a complete chart. Any help? -Jason A. Quest (talk) 14:00, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

This is a biased question but I'll throw it out there anyway ...

I find the two methodologies used to be a bit impractical from a macroscopic perspective. A couple of specific cases: Method 1 says that the coast of Louisiana is longer than Texas. While this is certainly true on a foot-by-foot basis, if you look at the map from a high level, the overall arc of the Texas coastline is much larger. Method 2 shows an even more counter-intuitive comparison saying that Louisiana has a longer coastline than California. I wonder if there is not some metric somewhere that measures the length of the arc that most closely approximates the coastline. I have not personally seen such an metric so maybe this is wishful thinking. But it seems such a metric is probably more useful for most things than adding up the dimensions of every little inlet on the coast.

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 16:32, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

The point of the coastline paradox is that there is no "objective" or "real" metric to measure a coastline. Looking at it from "a high level" (which level? 100 feet? 100 miles?) is no more or less accurate than looking at it on a foot-by-foot level. It's always a subjective - biased, if you will - choice. (And that's not even considering whether tidal estuaries should or shouldn't be included.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:48, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

There's no objective metric, but some are more intuitive than others. MC seems to be proposing a much lower resolution than used in the map here (almost an as-the-crow-flies end-to-end measurement, which would produce nonsense results for peninsular and especially island states), because to my eye LA and TX look comparable on this map: the big folds in the delta seem like they should count. But it's a moot point, because we don't have data at that resolution. I find Method 1's results reasonably intuitive (except for not counting the Great Lakes) but the data set is incomplete. The bottom line is that, unless someone finds a data set that's "better" (i.e. more intuitive, or more complete) than either of the two we have here... this is what we get. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:07, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Coming back to this one after a long time.

Let me throw out an analogy. Let's say I have a ball that is perfectly smooth and another ball with a smaller diameter made of foil crumpled up. Which is "bigger"? Obviously I could come up with different definitions of "bigger". If I measure the total surface area of that crumpled foil, its surface area will be much, much larger than the smooth ball. But arguing it is "bigger" doesn't make a lot of sense. Frankly the one with the larger diameter is more logical to call "bigger". One thing I could do to compare the circumference of the two in a meaningful way is to take a string, wrap it around each one, and measure how much of the string wraps around each. Granted that does not tell you everything about the two, but it seems much more meaningful in terms of comparing overall size.

In the same way, one could take an imaginary string and wrap it taught around the coastline. This is common mathematical approach to comparing arbitrary polygons. The resulting length of this imaginary string gives a number that is more meaningful in comparing coastline lengths. Among other things, this number is roughly proportional to the amount of time it takes to navigate from one end of the coastline to the other. So the number is not really arbitrary. It actually reflects something physically useful.

I have to believe that these numbers exist somewhere. IMHO such an analysis is more meaningful for a comparisons like this one.

-- MC 165.204.78.25 (talk) 22:19, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

P.S. Someone may offer a theoretical objection that this methodology is problematic if you have a some state where the entire coastline forms a highly concave gulf. (There is no such US state but just answering a theoretical issue.) In such a situation, the distance between the endpoints of the coastline could be much, much shorter than the overall contour of the gulf. You could extend the above methodology to you measure the length both using the methodology above and then measuring again treating the water as land and the land as water. Whichever of the two measurements is longer is the one that you use. -- MC 165.204.78.25 (talk) 22:40, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

If there is a reputable source that uses this method and has done the calculations, it might be worth including in this article. Otherwise of course, it's just a thought exercise. - DavidWBrooks (talk)

Coastal states

I see no point in maintaining the other article separately, as it's little more than a list itself, with a definition and some stats at the top. The name "coastal states" is definitely not a good one, as Mexico, Venezuela, Australia, Germany, India, and probably others have coastal states too. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 15:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Merge them. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:42, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Since nobody seems to care, I will do the merge. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:52, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

I've removed it from Template:Regions of North America –Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:14, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Michigan's coastline seems incorrect

Under Method 1 the coastline for Michigan shows 77,958 miles. I don't think that is correct, but is probably just a data entry error. Plus, under Method 1 the Great Lakes states like Michigan shouldn't be included anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Beth P (talk • contribs) 19:32, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Is Rhode Island off by a factor of 10?

Sources I have seen for Rhode Island, including the main Sea Grant Page and the RI state government site, say that Rhode Island has 400 miles of coastline. Considering the peninsulas and islands, that seems about right. It's called "the Ocean State" for a reason, and probably should be about where Lousiana is in your chart. 40 makes no sense. Even if the coastline ran completely straight N-S and there were no islands or peninsulas, it would be close to 50 miles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:a180:990a:9352:eb30:a889 (talk) 05:56, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

This is explained in the article: There are (at least) two different methods for calculating the length of the coastline, and we've cited the results of two. Check the sources if you thing there's a mistake copying the data. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:21, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

It does seem short, but if you check the source, a report to Congress, you'll see the figure. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:57, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Is Rhode Island's land area a data entry error?

This data table shows Rhode Island having an area of 1545 sq. mi, but the source of the census lists 1033.81 sq. mi and the State of Rhode Island's website lists 1045 sq. mi. and Bugscrap (talk) 17:23, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

References

The larger number includes water area as well as land. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:24, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Why does this article exist?

It's well known that coastlines have [no well-defined lengths](https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Coastline_paradox). So ordering US states by length of coastline is absurd. You can't actually do it. And of course a number of the comments here are about the lengths being wrong, because the estimates are super unreliable.

I suggest deleting this article. This is disinformation, essentially. LarsMarius (talk) 21:27, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

You don't need to have absolute measurements to compare things, just consistent ones. For example, if you measure a person's height wearing shoes or not, including their hair or not, with them slouching or not... you'll get different answers. But that doesn't mean you can't put Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, and Kenny Baker in order by height. You establish how you're going to measure them, then you use that method to measure them all. That's what both of the sources used by this article did. You can't compare the figures using one method with the figures using the other, but you definitely can compare figures that all use the same method. Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:00, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Further, the article gives readers a good idea of the complexities of measuring coastlines as well as acknowledgement of the coastline paradox. It's informative in that way, above and beyond the list. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:29, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Flawed logic and poorly-defined terminology

This article focuses on either oceanic coastline or some crazy admixture of waterway shoreline. Where does Georgia come in with thousands of miles of coastline (clealrly false), but Michigan, with 3,288 miles of coastline doesn't even appear in column 1 and is far down on column 2. Someone needs to rethink the terminology and methodology. Illinois only has 60 miles? That's the length of its Lake Michigan shoreline. Check out the length of its Mississippi River shoreline. Jaenc (talk) 22:26, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Did you read the article? It explains the reason for the measurements. If you can find an equivalent that includes lengths of rivers, add it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2022 (UTC)