Dana Point, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 0.8 miles southwest of Dana Point, CA?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 0.8 miles southwest of Dana Point, CA, 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 Dana Point, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 33.47, -117.70. 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.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 55 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 13% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.23 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, 0.12 ft/yr, would place it 871 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 National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Costa Mesa, CA sits at national rank 1140 for growth (1.48 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 19 miles from here. Dana Point, CA, 1.6 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading slight accretion (beach growing) at 0.44 ft/yr.
Dana Point, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.