Madaket, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 3.5 miles west of Madaket, MA
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 3.5 miles west of Madaket, MA, the shoreline has been moving inland at 2.1 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 21 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Madaket, MA is the nearest named place, 3.5 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 41.29, -70.25. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, 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.
What 2.1 ft/yr means over time
Run 3.5 miles west of Madaket, MA's 2.1 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 53 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 69 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 96% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.24 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 128. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Port St. Joe, FL, 1164 miles away, ranks 230 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.77 ft/yr, 0.4x this stretch's rate. 2 miles away, Madaket, MA is the nearest other measured stretch: severe erosion at 3.67 ft/yr.
Madaket, MA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.