Carmel Valley Village, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 17.6 miles south of Carmel Valley Village, CA?
The coast 17.6 miles south of Carmel Valley Village, 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.
What "Carmel Valley Village" means on this page
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Carmel Valley Village, CA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 36.26°N, 121.84°W. USGS's California assessment last surveyed this stretch through 1852-2016, 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 59 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 75% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.31 ft/yr either side. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.22 ft/yr reading would land it 486 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: Panacea, FL, 2199 miles away, ranks 1107 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1 ft/yr. 2 miles away, Carmel Valley Village, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.61 ft/yr.
Carmel Valley Village, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.