Point Arena, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 3.7 miles southeast of Point Arena, CA
The coast 3.7 miles southeast of Point Arena, CA has been retreating at a measured 0.19 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 1.9 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 Point Arena, CA. Centered near 38.87°N, 123.66°W. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
25 years at this rate
If 0.19 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 3.7 miles southeast of Point Arena, CA would retreat roughly 5 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
28 transects feed this segment's number; 96% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.17 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 515 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Sargent, TX sits at national rank 67 for erosion (4.3 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1742 miles from here. Point Arena, CA, 1 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Point Arena itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.