Fairhaven, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 0.8 miles north of Fairhaven, CA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 0.8 miles north of Fairhaven, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Fairhaven" 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 Fairhaven, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 40.80, -124.21. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California 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 backs this reading up
124 transects feed this segment's number; 58% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.47 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -0.03 ft/yr, would place it 745 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. Shinnecock Hills, NY sits at national rank 991 for growth (0.39 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2665 miles from here. Fairhaven, CA, 2.5 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Fairhaven itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.