Bradley Beach, NJ Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 0.4 miles northwest of Bradley Beach, NJ
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 0.4 miles northwest of Bradley Beach, NJ, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Bradley Beach" means on this page
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 Bradley Beach, NJ, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 40.21, -74.02. 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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 82 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 51% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±1.16 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.02 ft/yr, would place it 750 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: Manzanita, OR, 2511 miles away, ranks 1133 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.28 ft/yr. Belmar, NJ, 1.8 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Bradley Beach itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.