Pepperdine University, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 0.9 miles southeast of Pepperdine University, CA?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 0.9 miles southeast of Pepperdine University, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
The grain of this number
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Pepperdine University, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 34.03, -118.70. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 96 individual transects averaged together, 72% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.12 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.1 ft/yr, would place it 653 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 1100 nationally for growth belongs to Pacific Beach, WA, 954 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.95 ft/yr. 2.8 miles away, Pepperdine University, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Pepperdine University: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.