Davenport, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 8.4 miles northwest of Davenport, CA?
The coast 8.4 miles northwest of Davenport, CA has been retreating at a measured 0.67 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 6.7 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
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 Davenport, CA. Centered near 37.11°N, 122.29°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
If 0.67 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 8.4 miles northwest of Davenport, CA would retreat roughly 17 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
103 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.33 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 247 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Orleans, MA, 2768 miles away, ranks 172 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 1.37 ft/yr, 2.0x this stretch's rate. 2.1 miles away, Davenport, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Davenport: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.