Point Reyes Station, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 6.7 miles south of Point Reyes Station, CA
0.4 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 6.7 miles south of Point Reyes Station, CA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 4 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Point Reyes Station, CA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 37.99°N, 122.81°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.
25 years at this rate
If 0.4 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 6.7 miles south of Point Reyes Station, CA would retreat roughly 10 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 62 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.4 ft/yr. This segment ranks 355 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Dulac, LA, 1933 miles away, ranks 12 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 14.91 ft/yr, many times over this stretch's own rate. 2.3 miles away, Bolinas, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
Point Reyes Station, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.