Leggett, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 9.5 miles southwest of Leggett, CA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 9.5 miles southwest of Leggett, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What this reading actually covers
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 Leggett, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 39.75, -123.83. 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 73 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 84% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.5 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.15 ft/yr, would place it 567 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 National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Oyehut, WA, 501 miles away, ranks 1208 of 1211 nationally for growth, 7.54 ft/yr. 2 miles away, Leggett, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Leggett: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.