Boothbay Harbor, ME Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 12 miles southwest of Boothbay Harbor, ME
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 12 miles southwest of Boothbay Harbor, ME, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What this reading actually covers
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 Boothbay Harbor, ME, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 43.74, -69.80. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, 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.
What backs this reading up
76 transects feed this segment's number; 28% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.55 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, 0.26 ft/yr, would place it 949 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. For scale: Anchor Bay, CA, 2763 miles away, ranks 1039 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.58 ft/yr. Brunswick, ME, 1.5 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Boothbay Harbor, ME on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.