Kittery Point, ME Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.2 miles southeast of Kittery Point, ME?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 1.2 miles southeast of Kittery Point, ME, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
The grain of this number
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 Kittery Point, ME, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 43.08, -70.67. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
Where this fits nationally
34 transects feed this segment's number; 74% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.15 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.04 ft/yr, would place it 724 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 2010-1119. For scale: Tokeland, WA, 2575 miles away, ranks 1200 of 1211 nationally for growth, 5.19 ft/yr. York Harbor, ME, 5.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Kittery Point itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.