Huntington Beach, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 2.1 miles southwest of Huntington Beach, CA?
2.1 miles southwest of Huntington Beach, CA: 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.
What "Huntington Beach" 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 Huntington Beach, CA. Centered near 33.67°N, 118.03°W. 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.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 6 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.27 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.08 ft/yr reading would land it 679 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Fields Landing, CA sits at national rank 1085 for growth (0.85 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 595 miles from here. 1.9 miles up the coast, Huntington Beach, CA shows 0.98 ft/yr of accreting.
One address near Huntington Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.