Dana Point, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.7 miles west of Dana Point, CA
Unusual good news for this stretch: the shoreline 1.7 miles west of Dana Point, CA has grown by a measured 0.44 feet a year on average, per USGS's long-term transect data for this section. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 4.4 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Dana Point, CA. Centered near 33.48°N, 117.72°W. 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.
25 years at this rate
Holding the 0.44 ft/yr accretion rate 1.7 miles west of Dana Point, CA for 25 years would add roughly 11 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
Averaging 17 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 0% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.3 ft/yr. This segment ranks 1006 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Anchor Bay, CA, 488 miles away, ranks 1039 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.58 ft/yr, 1.3x this stretch's rate. 1.6 miles away, Dana Point, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Dana Point itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.