CoastErosionCheck

Cannon Beach, OR Coastal Erosion Rate

Shoreline change 2.5 miles south of Cannon Beach, OR

No significant trend

2.5 miles south of Cannon Beach, OR: USGS's transects didn't pick up a trend here that beats the survey's own uncertainty. That's the majority case nationally, and for this stretch specifically it means the coast is holding, not that the data failed to find anything.

The grain of this number

This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Cannon Beach, OR. Centered near 45.85°N, 123.96°W. Survey years: 2002-2011, method LRR, from USGS's Pacific Northwest 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.

How solid is this number

90 transects feed this segment's number; 24% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±1.45 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.23 ft/yr reading would land it 938 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2012-1008. For scale: Crescent City, CA, 284 miles away, ranks 1131 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.27 ft/yr. 2.7 miles away, Cannon Beach, OR is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.

Not this whole stretch, just Cannon Beach itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.