CoastErosionCheck

Inverness, CA Coastal Erosion Rate

Shoreline change 6.6 miles west of Inverness, CA

No significant trend

6.6 miles west of Inverness, 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.

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 Inverness, CA. Centered near 38.08°N, 122.98°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.

What backs this reading up

Averaging 7 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 0% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.45 ft/yr either side. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.33 ft/yr reading would land it 974 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. Rank 1130 nationally for growth belongs to Orick, CA, 235 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.26 ft/yr. 1.8 miles up the coast, Inverness, CA shows 0.27 ft/yr of accreting.

Not this whole stretch, just Inverness itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.