Digital substrate imagery of the intertidal shoreline collected between 2011-2023 on the Elwha River Delta, Washington State, USA

This archive includes annual and bi-annual image sets collected on the intertidal beach of the Elwha River delta in Washington State, USA during 18 distinct surveys between 2011 and 2023. This period spanned the removal of two large dams on the Elwha River, that led to morphologic changes on the river's delta and adjacent shorelines (Warrick and others, 2019). The images in this archive were collected coincident with topography and bathymetry surveys of the Elwha River delta (Stevens and others, 2025), and provide a photographic record of substrate changes associated with the topobathymetric evolution of a mixed sand and gravel delta. These digital images were collected along transects to support automated ‘digital grain size analysis’ (following, for example, Warrick and others, 2009), or substrate classification. The collection of this dataset was supported with funding from the US Geological Survey and Washington Sea Grant. These data were collected in part on the lands of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and the collection of these images could not have been implemented without the support and authorization (through an access and research permit) of the Tribe. Additional field, logistical and project support has been provided by Jon Warrick (USGS), Dan Buscombe (Washington Department of Ecology, and formerly a USGS contractor), Matt Beirne (Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe), Cal Schurman (UW), Sam Alampay (UW), Christie Hegermiller (UW), Jackson Currey (USGS), Jon Felis (USGS), Brittany Johnson, Chris Clark, Vivian Leung, Kevin Simans, Tara McBride, Eliza Dawson, Amy Waeschle, Jacob Melly, Karsten Turrey, Bethany Nagid, Silsa Schiera, Jacob Carelson, Nancy Bluestein-Johnson (WWU), Emily Portillo, Wei Ying Wong, Zachary Levitan, George Kaminsky (Washington Department of Ecology), and Gabby Alampay (Landau Associates, formerly at Washington Department of Ecology).