North Bend, OR Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 3.5 miles west of North Bend, OR?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 3.5 miles west of North Bend, OR, 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 North Bend, OR, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 43.40, -124.30. USGS's Pacific Northwest assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2002-2011, 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 backs this reading up
This reading comes from 121 individual transects averaged together, 58% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.48 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -0.05 ft/yr, would place it 711 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: Pajaro Dunes, CA, 469 miles away, ranks 1011 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.45 ft/yr. Barview, OR, 2.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading accretion (beach growing) at 2.33 ft/yr.
North Bend, OR on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.