Gloucester, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 2 miles northwest of Gloucester, MA?
The coast 2 miles northwest of Gloucester, MA shows no statistically significant trend either way. USGS's transects measured a rate here, but it's smaller than the survey's own margin of error for this stretch, so calling it "eroding" or "growing" would overstate what the data actually shows.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Gloucester, MA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 42.65°N, 70.71°W. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 51 individual transects averaged together, 14% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.23 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.12 ft/yr reading would land it 867 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Orick, CA sits at national rank 1130 for growth (1.26 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2695 miles from here. 2 miles up the coast, Essex, MA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Gloucester: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.