Fields Landing, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.6 miles northwest of Fields Landing, CA?
Unusual good news for this stretch: the shoreline 1.6 miles northwest of Fields Landing, CA has grown by a measured 2.04 feet a year on average, per USGS's long-term transect data for this section. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 20.4 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Fields Landing, CA is the nearest named place, 1.6 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: 40.74, -124.24. 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 2.04 ft/yr means over time
Holding the 2.04 ft/yr accretion rate 1.6 miles northwest of Fields Landing, CA for 25 years would add roughly 51 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 76 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 0% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.69 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 1157. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Port St. Joe, FL sits at national rank 1035 for growth (0.56 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2295 miles from here. Fairhaven, CA, 2.1 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Fields Landing, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.