Huntington Beach, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 2.9 miles south of Huntington Beach, CA
2.9 miles south of Huntington Beach, CA, the coast is advancing, not retreating, at a measured 0.98 feet a year, sediment accumulating faster than any erosion USGS recorded here. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 9.8 feet over the last decade.
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 Huntington Beach, CA. Centered near 33.66°N, 118.00°W. USGS's California assessment last surveyed this stretch through 1852-2016, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
25 years at this rate
Holding the 0.98 ft/yr accretion rate 2.9 miles south of Huntington Beach, CA for 25 years would add roughly 25 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
Averaging 120 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 13% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.31 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 1103. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 1125 nationally for growth belongs to Coronado, CA, 85 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.22 ft/yr, 1.2x this stretch's rate. 1.9 miles up the coast, Huntington Beach, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Huntington Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.