Davenport, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 4.3 miles southeast of Davenport, CA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 4.3 miles southeast of Davenport, 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 Davenport, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 36.97, -122.14. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 17 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.77 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -0.59 ft/yr, would place it 274 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. For scale: Smith River, CA, 364 miles away, ranks 919 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.19 ft/yr. Davenport, CA, 1.4 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Davenport: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.