Guadalupe, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 4.8 miles west of Guadalupe, CA
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 4.8 miles west of Guadalupe, CA, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.54 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 15.4 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Guadalupe, CA is the nearest named place, 4.8 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: 34.95, -120.66. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California 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.
What 1.54 ft/yr means over time
Run 4.8 miles west of Guadalupe, CA's 1.54 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 39 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
Averaging 106 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 96% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.7 ft/yr either side. This segment ranks 156 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 183 nationally for erosion belongs to Dewey Beach, DE, 2509 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.17 ft/yr, 0.8x this stretch's rate. 3.3 miles away, Guadalupe, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Guadalupe: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.