Lompoc, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 9.6 miles southwest of Lompoc, CA?
0.62 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 9.6 miles southwest of Lompoc, CA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 6.2 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Lompoc, CA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 34.56°N, 120.58°W. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California 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.
25 years at this rate
If 0.62 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 9.6 miles southwest of Lompoc, CA would retreat roughly 16 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 7 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.32 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 259 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 437 nationally for erosion belongs to South Duxbury, MA, 2719 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.25 ft/yr, 0.4x this stretch's rate. 2.6 miles away, Lompoc, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.3 ft/yr.
Lompoc, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.