Pescadero, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 3.6 miles south of Pescadero, CA
3.6 miles south of Pescadero, CA: 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 "Pescadero" 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 Pescadero, CA. Centered near 37.20°N, 122.40°W. 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 25 individual transects averaged together, 30% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.37 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.14 ft/yr reading would land it 888 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Huntington Beach, CA, 348 miles away, ranks 1103 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.98 ft/yr. Pescadero, CA, 2 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading slight erosion at 0.21 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Pescadero itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.