Orick, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 3.6 miles north of Orick, CA?
The coast 3.6 miles north of Orick, CA shows no statistically significant trend either way. USGS's transects measured a rate here, but it's smaller than the survey's own margin of error for this stretch, so calling it "eroding" or "growing" would overstate what the data actually shows.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Orick, CA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 41.34°N, 124.08°W. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California 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
79 transects feed this segment's number; 56% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.64 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.25 ft/yr reading would land it 445 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Bayport, NY sits at national rank 1083 for growth (0.83 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2622 miles from here. 1.8 miles away, Orick, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: accretion (beach growing) at 1.26 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Orick itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.