The Arctic coastal zone is sensitive to changes in marine, atmospheric, and terrestrial systems. Variations in sea ice extent, wave and storm intensity, air and water temperatures, and ground ice content affect the rate and magnitude of coastal change. A very sparsely populated region, the Arctic coastline is poorly observed when compared to temperate and tropical coastal zones, despite the fact that human systems in the Arctic are located in and dependent on processes in the coastal zone. The Arctic coastal zone needs to be monitored, both as a barometer for global change and for its human relevance. The international effort to align coastal observations in the Arctic is led by the Arctic Circumpolar Coastal Observatory Network (ACCO-Net). ACCO-Net includes a network of key sites setup by the Arctic Coastal Dynamics (ACD) project of the IASC, and 17 International Polar Year (IPY) projects from around the Arctic. ACCO-Net provides three categories of support to an SAON: 1) a network of regional experts responsible for running observations; 2) historical and current data in an Arctic circumpolar GIS database; and 3) a catalogue of site characteristics based on remotely sensed products. The regional experts have been assembled through IASC’s Arctic Coastal Dynamics project, and through the IPY project cluster on Arctic coastal observatories, which ACCO-Net leads. The coastal database is currently available in beta form, and includes a segmentation and classification of the circumpolar Arctic coastline. The current coastline used is the World Vector Shoreline, which has been divided into over 8000 segments on the basis of geomorphology, coastline position change rate, and ground composition, as well as other parameters. The GIS format allows searching and querying, and the database is currently mounted as an internet map server. The catalogue of site characteristics has two principle aspects: i) a monitoring template describing the primary and secondary monitoring parameters for each observatory site, and including links to standard operating procedures for each, and ii) standardized coastline position and digital elevation models for each observatory site, based on optical and infrared satellite data collected during IPY as part of the European Space Agency’s IPY program. ACCO-Net partner projects are currently selecting imagery for the catalogue and will co-ordinate their activities via a series of workshops supported by the International Space Science Institute.