Madaket, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.1 miles southwest of Madaket, MA?
The coast 1.1 miles southwest of Madaket, MA has been retreating at a measured 3.49 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 34.9 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
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 Madaket, MA. Centered near 41.27°N, 70.19°W. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
25 years at this rate
If 3.49 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 1.1 miles southwest of Madaket, MA would retreat roughly 87 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
65 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.43 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 83. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Rank 301 nationally for erosion belongs to Sagaponack, NY, 109 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.49 ft/yr, 0.1x this stretch's rate. 1.4 miles up the coast, Madaket, MA shows 3.67 ft/yr of eroding.
Not this whole stretch, just Madaket itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.