East Quogue, NY Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.8 miles south of East Quogue, NY
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 1.8 miles south of East Quogue, NY, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.32 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 3.2 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
East Quogue, NY is the nearest named place, 1.8 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 40.82, -72.56. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
What 0.32 ft/yr means over time
Run 1.8 miles south of East Quogue, NY's 0.32 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 8 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 43 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.28 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 395. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Captree, NY, 38 miles away, ranks 192 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 1.04 ft/yr, 3.3x this stretch's rate. 1.4 miles up the coast, East Quogue, NY shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just East Quogue itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.