Gulf Shores, AL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 6.3 miles west of Gulf Shores, AL
6.3 miles west of Gulf Shores, AL: USGS's transects didn't pick up a trend here that beats the survey's own uncertainty. That's the majority case nationally, and for this stretch specifically it means the coast is holding, not that the data failed to find anything.
The grain of this number
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 Gulf Shores, AL. Centered near 30.24°N, 87.80°W. Survey years: 2001, method LRR, from USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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 backs this reading up
This reading comes from 104 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.86 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.2 ft/yr reading would land it 500 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Crescent City, CA, 2165 miles away, ranks 1131 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.27 ft/yr. Gulf Shores, AL, 3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Gulf Shores: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.