Pastoria, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 4.3 miles southeast of Pastoria, VA
6.78 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 4.3 miles southeast of Pastoria, VA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 67.8 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Pastoria, VA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 37.70°N, 75.59°W. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, 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
If 6.78 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 4.3 miles southeast of Pastoria, VA would retreat roughly 170 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 24 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±5.01 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 37. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Port Mansfield, TX sits at national rank 137 for erosion (1.99 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1481 miles from here. 3.3 miles away, Wachapreague, VA is the nearest other measured stretch: severe erosion at 4.37 ft/yr.
One address near Pastoria: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.