Klamath, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 8.6 miles south of Klamath, CA?
8.6 miles south of Klamath, 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 "Klamath" 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 Klamath, CA. Centered near 41.45°N, 124.06°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
Averaging 107 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 44% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.82 ft/yr either side. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.41 ft/yr reading would land it 1000 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. For scale: Beach Haven, NJ, 2584 miles away, ranks 995 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.4 ft/yr. 3.4 miles away, Orick, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: accretion (beach growing) at 1.86 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Klamath itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.