Laguna Beach, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.2 miles southwest of Laguna Beach, CA
1.2 miles southwest of Laguna 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 this reading actually covers
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 Laguna Beach, CA. Centered near 33.53°N, 117.77°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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 13 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.17 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.11 ft/yr reading would land it 640 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 1106 nationally for growth belongs to Channel Islands Beach, CA, 95 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.99 ft/yr. 1.9 miles up the coast, Laguna Beach, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Laguna Beach itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.