Carmel Valley Village, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 14.4 miles southwest of Carmel Valley Village, CA?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 14.4 miles southwest of Carmel Valley Village, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Carmel Valley Village" 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 Carmel Valley Village, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 36.34, -121.89. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
How solid is this number
34 transects feed this segment's number; 70% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.33 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.04 ft/yr, would place it 734 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 National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: East Atlantic Beach, NY, 2591 miles away, ranks 1172 of 1211 nationally for growth, 2.39 ft/yr. Carmel Valley Village, CA, 2.2 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Carmel Valley Village, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.