Panacea, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 6.6 miles south of Panacea, FL?
The coast 6.6 miles south of Panacea, FL is actually gaining ground, not losing it: USGS's transects measure 1 feet of accretion a year here, sediment building up rather than washing away. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 10 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
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 Panacea, FL. Centered near 29.93°N, 84.36°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.
25 years at this rate
Holding the 1 ft/yr accretion rate 6.6 miles south of Panacea, FL for 25 years would add roughly 25 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 51 individual transects averaged together, 0% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.5 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 1107 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 1167 nationally for growth belongs to Gearhart, OR, 2392 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.24 ft/yr, 2.2x this stretch's rate. Panacea, FL, 1 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Panacea itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.