Gloucester, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 4.4 miles southwest of Gloucester, MA
The coast 4.4 miles southwest of Gloucester, MA has been retreating at a measured 0.18 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 1.8 feet over the last decade.
What "Gloucester" means on this page
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 Gloucester, MA. Centered near 42.57°N, 70.73°W. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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
If 0.18 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 4.4 miles southwest of Gloucester, MA would retreat roughly 5 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
1 transect feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.1 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 522 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Buellton, CA, 2701 miles away, ranks 530 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.18 ft/yr, 1.0x this stretch's rate. Gloucester, MA, 1.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Gloucester: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.