CoastErosionCheck

Newport, OR Coastal Erosion Rate

Shoreline change 1.9 miles southwest of Newport, OR

No significant trend

Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 1.9 miles southwest of Newport, OR, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.

The grain of this number

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 Newport, OR, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 44.60, -124.06. Survey years: 2002-2011, method LRR, from USGS's Pacific Northwest 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 86 individual transects averaged together, 2% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.39 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, 0.46 ft/yr, would place it 1013 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 2012-1008. For scale: Seaside, OR, 98 miles away, ranks 1155 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.99 ft/yr. 3.2 miles away, Newport, OR is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.

Not this whole stretch, just Newport itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.