Bolivar Peninsula, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 6.4 miles northeast of Bolivar Peninsula, TX
2.29 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 6.4 miles northeast of Bolivar Peninsula, TX, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 22.9 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 29.54°N, 94.48°W. USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2001, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
25 years at this rate
If 2.29 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 6.4 miles northeast of Bolivar Peninsula, TX would retreat roughly 57 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 14 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.42 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 117. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 329 nationally for erosion belongs to Klamath, CA, 1849 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.44 ft/yr, 0.2x this stretch's rate. 1.8 miles up the coast, Bolivar Peninsula, TX shows 1.75 ft/yr of eroding.
Not this whole stretch, just Bolivar Peninsula itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.