Palacios, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 12.5 miles south of Palacios, TX?
12.5 miles south of Palacios, TX: 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.
What "Palacios" means on this page
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 Palacios, TX. Centered near 28.55°N, 96.15°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.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 111 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 ±0.56 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.33 ft/yr reading would land it 388 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Mexico Beach, FL, 652 miles away, ranks 1156 of 1211 nationally for growth, 2.02 ft/yr. 2.4 miles away, Palacios, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Palacios: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.