Fort Myers Beach, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 2.6 miles northwest of Fort Myers Beach, FL
The coast 2.6 miles northwest of Fort Myers Beach, FL is actually gaining ground, not losing it: USGS's transects measure 0.39 feet of accretion a year here, sediment building up rather than washing away. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 3.9 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Fort Myers Beach, FL. Centered near 26.46°N, 81.94°W. The survey behind it runs to 2001, in USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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.
25 years at this rate
Holding the 0.39 ft/yr accretion rate 2.6 miles northwest of Fort Myers Beach, FL for 25 years would add roughly 10 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
Where this fits nationally
69 transects feed this segment's number; 10% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.26 ft/yr either side. This segment ranks 990 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Channel Islands Beach, CA, 2274 miles away, ranks 1106 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.99 ft/yr, 2.5x this stretch's rate. Fort Myers Beach, FL, 2.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading slight erosion at 0.23 ft/yr.
Fort Myers Beach, FL on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.