Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 9.1 miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
The coast 9.1 miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA shows no statistically significant trend either way. USGS's transects measured a rate here, but it's smaller than the survey's own margin of error for this stretch, so calling it "eroding" or "growing" would overstate what the data actually shows.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 36.42°N, 121.91°W. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California 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
This reading comes from 17 individual transects averaged together, 79% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.28 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.01 ft/yr reading would land it 767 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Qui-nai-elt Village, WA, 757 miles away, ranks 1112 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.04 ft/yr. 0.3 miles away, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.59 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Carmel-by-the-Sea itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.