Coinjock, NC Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 15 miles north of Coinjock, NC
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 15 miles north of Coinjock, NC, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
The grain of this number
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 Coinjock, NC, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 36.56, -75.89. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, 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.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 60 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 32% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.65 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, 0.61 ft/yr, would place it 1048 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. Winchester Bay, OR sits at national rank 1117 for growth (1.07 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2562 miles from here. Virginia Beach, VA, 2.7 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading slight erosion at 0.61 ft/yr.
Coinjock, NC on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.