East Sandwich, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 1.6 miles east of East Sandwich, MA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 1.6 miles east of East Sandwich, MA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "East Sandwich" means on this page
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 East Sandwich, MA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 41.73, -70.40. 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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 79 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 73% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.18 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -0.07 ft/yr, would place it 687 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 Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Long Beach, CA, 2632 miles away, ranks 1089 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.89 ft/yr. 2.6 miles up the coast, East Sandwich, MA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near East Sandwich: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.