Charlestown, RI Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.6 miles southeast of Charlestown, RI
Nothing alarming measured 1.6 miles southeast of Charlestown, RI: whatever shift USGS's transects picked up here is too small to call reliably one way or the other, which this site reports as "no significant trend" rather than forcing a direction.
What this reading actually covers
Charlestown, RI is the nearest named place, 1.6 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 41.37, -71.60. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 86 individual transects averaged together, 93% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.21 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.18 ft/yr, would place it 524 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. Rank 1159 nationally for growth belongs to Atlantic City, NJ, 203 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.07 ft/yr. 1.6 miles away, Charlestown, RI is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
Charlestown, RI on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.