Heceta Beach, OR Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 9.5 miles north of Heceta Beach, OR
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 9.5 miles north of Heceta Beach, OR, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Heceta Beach" means on this page
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Heceta Beach, OR, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 44.16, -124.11. Survey years: 2002-2011, method LRR, from USGS's Pacific Northwest 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 53 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.64 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.46 ft/yr, would place it 316 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2012-1008. Rank 1115 nationally for growth belongs to Marina del Rey, CA, 765 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.04 ft/yr. Yachats, OR, 2.4 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Heceta Beach, OR on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.