Chatham, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 2.2 miles northeast of Chatham, MA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 2.2 miles northeast of Chatham, MA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Chatham" 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 Chatham, MA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 41.70, -69.94. 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.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 112 individual transects averaged together, 66% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±1.97 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.9 ft/yr, would place it 211 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. Seaside, OR sits at national rank 1155 for growth (1.99 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2654 miles from here. 3.4 miles up the coast, Orleans, MA shows 1.32 ft/yr of eroding.
Not this whole stretch, just Chatham itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.