Pajaro Dunes, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 1.2 miles northwest of Pajaro Dunes, CA
Unusual good news for this stretch: the shoreline 1.2 miles northwest of Pajaro Dunes, CA has grown by a measured 0.45 feet a year on average, per USGS's long-term transect data for this section. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 4.5 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Pajaro Dunes, CA is the nearest named place, 1.2 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 36.88, -121.82. USGS's California assessment last surveyed this stretch through 1852-2016, 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.
What 0.45 ft/yr means over time
Holding the 0.45 ft/yr accretion rate 1.2 miles northwest of Pajaro Dunes, CA for 25 years would add roughly 11 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
What backs this reading up
3 transects feed this segment's number; 0% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.22 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 1011 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Atlantic Beach, NY sits at national rank 1170 for growth (2.35 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2572 miles from here. 1.9 miles away, Pajaro Dunes, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Pajaro Dunes itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.