Oriole Beach, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 0.5 miles south of Oriole Beach, FL
0.5 miles south of Oriole Beach, FL: USGS's transects didn't pick up a trend here that beats the survey's own uncertainty. That's the majority case nationally, and for this stretch specifically it means the coast is holding, not that the data failed to find anything.
The grain of this number
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 Oriole Beach, FL. Centered near 30.36°N, 87.10°W. USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2001, 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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 99 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.62 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.31 ft/yr reading would land it 399 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Fields Landing, CA sits at national rank 1085 for growth (0.85 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2190 miles from here. 2.4 miles up the coast, Tiger Point, FL shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Oriole Beach, FL on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.