Apalachicola, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 10.6 miles west of Apalachicola, FL
The coast 10.6 miles west of Apalachicola, FL shows no statistically significant trend either way. USGS's transects measured a rate here, but it's smaller than the survey's own margin of error for this stretch, so calling it "eroding" or "growing" would overstate what the data actually shows.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Apalachicola, FL into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 29.68°N, 85.16°W. The survey behind it runs to 2001, in USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 42 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 0% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±1.17 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.48 ft/yr reading would land it 1019 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Carpinteria, CA sits at national rank 942 for growth (0.23 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2024 miles from here. 2.1 miles away, Apalachicola, FL is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Apalachicola itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.