Orick, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 3.2 miles southwest of Orick, CA
The coast 3.2 miles southwest 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.
What this reading actually covers
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 41.25°N, 124.10°W. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 105 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 89% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.42 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.34 ft/yr reading would land it 383 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. For scale: Camp Pendleton South, CA, 660 miles away, ranks 1024 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.49 ft/yr. 3.2 miles up the coast, Big Lagoon, CA shows 0.68 ft/yr of eroding.
Not this whole stretch, just Orick itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.