Pascagoula, MS Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 12.3 miles southeast of Pascagoula, MS
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 12.3 miles southeast of Pascagoula, MS, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.29 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 12.9 feet over the last decade.
What "Pascagoula" means on this page
Pascagoula, MS is the nearest named place, 12.3 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: 30.21, -88.44. 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.
What 1.29 ft/yr means over time
Run 12.3 miles southeast of Pascagoula, MS's 1.29 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 32 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
81 transects feed this segment's number; 79% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.95 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 177. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 137 nationally for erosion belongs to Port Mansfield, TX, 595 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.99 ft/yr, 1.5x this stretch's rate. 1.6 miles away, Pascagoula, MS is the nearest other measured stretch: severe erosion at 5.28 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Pascagoula itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.