Orleans, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 3 miles east of Orleans, MA?
1.37 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 3 miles east of Orleans, MA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 13.7 feet over the last decade.
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 Orleans, MA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 41.80°N, 69.94°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 1.37 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 3 miles east of Orleans, MA would retreat roughly 34 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 103 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 87% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.64 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 172 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Rank 46 nationally for erosion belongs to Gulf Park Estates, MS, 1321 miles from this stretch, measured at 5.71 ft/yr, 4.2x this stretch's rate. Orleans, MA, 3.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading moderate erosion at 1.32 ft/yr.
Orleans, MA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.