Del Mar, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 7.2 miles south of Del Mar, CA?
7.2 miles south of Del Mar, CA: USGS's transects didn't pick up a trend here that beats the survey's own uncertainty. That's the majority case nationally, and for this stretch specifically it means the coast is holding, not that the data failed to find anything.
What "Del Mar" means on this page
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 Del Mar, CA. Centered near 32.86°N, 117.26°W. USGS's California assessment last surveyed this stretch through 1852-2016, 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.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 39 individual transects averaged together, 26% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.48 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.05 ft/yr reading would land it 822 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Mexico Beach, FL sits at national rank 1181 for growth (2.91 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1876 miles from here. Del Mar, CA, 2.4 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Del Mar: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.