Mexico Beach, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 4.6 miles southeast of Mexico Beach, FL
4.6 miles southeast of Mexico Beach, FL, the coast is advancing, not retreating, at a measured 0.6 feet a year, sediment accumulating faster than any erosion USGS recorded here. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 6 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 Mexico Beach, FL. Centered near 29.92°N, 85.34°W. The survey behind it runs to 2001, in USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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
Holding the 0.6 ft/yr accretion rate 4.6 miles southeast of Mexico Beach, FL for 25 years would add roughly 15 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
41 transects feed this segment's number; 0% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.3 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 1046. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Santa Monica, CA sits at national rank 932 for growth (0.21 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1958 miles from here. 1.7 miles away, Mexico Beach, FL is the nearest other measured stretch: slight accretion (beach growing) at 0.47 ft/yr.
One address near Mexico Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.