This polygon shapefile represents the boundary between land and ocean, excluding Antarctica, at high resolution. High-resolution represents an 80 percent reduction in size and quality from the full (original) resolution layer. The Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography (GSHHG) Database is a high-resolution geography data set amalgamated from three data bases in the public domain. This layer is part of GSHHG Version 2.3.3. The World Vector Shorelines (WVS) is the basis for shorelines except for Antarctica while the CIA World Data Bank (WDBII) is the basis for lakes, although there are instances where differences in coastline representations necessitated adding WDBII islands to GSHHG. The WDBII source also provides all political borders and rivers. GSHHG data have undergone extensive processing and should be free of internal inconsistencies such as erratic points and crossing segments. Atlas of the Cryosphere (AC) provides the basis for Antarctica coastlines. The shorelines are constructed entirely from hierarchically arranged closed polygons. These shoreline polygon data can be used to simplify data searches and data selections and to study the statistical characteristics of shorelines and land-masses. Wessel, P., and W. H. F. Smith (2014). World Shoreline Boundary between Land and Ocean, 2014 (High-resolution). (v. 2.3.3). United States. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Available at http://purl.stanford.edu/ky855gy0473. GSHHG used to be called GSHHS (Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shorelines) but since rivers and political boundaries were also included we changed it to GSHHG starting with version 2.2.1.
The addition of AC since 2.3.0 allows two choices for Antarctica coastlines: Ice-front or Grounding line. These are encoded as levels 5 and 6, respectively.