Bolivar Peninsula, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 11.2 miles northeast of Bolivar Peninsula, TX
1.55 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 11.2 miles northeast of Bolivar Peninsula, TX, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 15.5 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Bolivar Peninsula, TX into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 29.57°N, 94.40°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.
25 years at this rate
If 1.55 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 11.2 miles northeast of Bolivar Peninsula, TX would retreat roughly 39 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
88 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.88 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 155. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 61 nationally for erosion belongs to Boothville, LA, 334 miles from this stretch, measured at 4.47 ft/yr, 2.9x this stretch's rate. 1.6 miles away, Bolivar Peninsula, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: moderate erosion at 1.41 ft/yr.
One address near Bolivar Peninsula: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.