Fort Myers Beach, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 0.8 miles north of Fort Myers Beach, FL?
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 0.8 miles north of Fort Myers Beach, FL, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.23 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 2.3 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Fort Myers Beach, FL is the nearest named place, 0.8 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: 26.44, -81.91. USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2001, 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 0.23 ft/yr means over time
Run 0.8 miles north of Fort Myers Beach, FL's 0.23 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 6 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 61 individual transects averaged together, 82% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.17 ft/yr. This segment ranks 461 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: West Ocean City, MD, 910 miles away, ranks 49 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 5.51 ft/yr, many times over this stretch's own rate. Fort Myers Beach, FL, 2.2 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Fort Myers Beach, FL on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.