Miramar Beach, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 8.7 miles east of Miramar Beach, FL?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 8.7 miles east of Miramar Beach, FL, 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 Miramar Beach, FL, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 30.36, -86.20. Survey years: 2001, method LRR, from USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 102 individual transects averaged together, 26% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.31 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, 0.06 ft/yr, would place it 823 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 Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 1178 nationally for growth belongs to Siesta Key, FL, 308 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.82 ft/yr. 1.9 miles up the coast, Miramar Beach, FL shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Miramar Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.