Belmar, NJ Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding right at Belmar, NJ?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, right at Belmar, NJ, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
The grain of this number
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Belmar, NJ, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 40.18, -74.03. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 23 individual transects averaged together, 0% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.45 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, 0.31 ft/yr, would place it 967 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Oyehut, WA sits at national rank 1208 for growth (7.54 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2509 miles from here. 1.8 miles away, Bradley Beach, NJ is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Belmar: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.