Fort Bragg, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.2 miles north of Fort Bragg, CA?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 1.2 miles north of Fort Bragg, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Fort Bragg" 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 Fort Bragg, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 39.46, -123.81. 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.
Where this fits nationally
32 transects feed this segment's number; 61% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.55 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.06 ft/yr, would place it 701 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. Rank 962 nationally for growth belongs to Saco, ME, 2732 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.3 ft/yr. Cleone, CA, 3.5 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Fort Bragg itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.