North Scituate, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 1.6 miles southeast of North Scituate, MA
The coast 1.6 miles southeast of North Scituate, MA has been retreating at a measured 0.26 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 2.6 feet over the last decade.
What "North Scituate" means on this page
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 North Scituate, MA. Centered near 42.20°N, 70.74°W. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
25 years at this rate
If 0.26 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 1.6 miles southeast of North Scituate, MA would retreat roughly 7 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
111 transects feed this segment's number; 99% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.15 ft/yr. This segment ranks 430 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. San Buenaventura (Ventura), CA sits at national rank 450 for erosion (0.25 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2655 miles from here. Scituate, MA, 0.9 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading slight erosion at 0.17 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just North Scituate itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.