Fire Island, NY Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 0.3 miles northeast of Fire Island, NY
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 0.3 miles northeast of Fire Island, NY, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.78 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 7.8 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Fire Island, NY is the nearest named place, 0.3 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: 40.64, -73.20. 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 0.78 ft/yr means over time
Run 0.3 miles northeast of Fire Island, NY's 0.78 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 20 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 86 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.19 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 229. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Boothville, LA, 1153 miles away, ranks 40 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 6.36 ft/yr, 8.2x this stretch's rate. Captree, NY, 2.7 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading moderate erosion at 1.04 ft/yr.
Fire Island, NY on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.