Essex, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 2.7 miles north of Essex, MA?
2.7 miles north of Essex, MA: 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 "Essex" 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 Essex, MA. Centered near 42.68°N, 70.75°W. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, 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.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 30 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 43% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.79 ft/yr either side. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.04 ft/yr reading would land it 810 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Point Lookout, NY sits at national rank 1194 for growth (4.23 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 204 miles from here. Essex, MA, 0.9 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Essex, MA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.