Port Mansfield, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 14 miles southeast of Port Mansfield, TX
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 14 miles southeast of Port Mansfield, TX, the shoreline has been moving inland at 2.26 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 22.6 feet over the last decade.
What "Port Mansfield" means on this page
Port Mansfield, TX is the nearest named place, 14 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 26.45, -97.26. Survey years: 2001, method LRR, from USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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 2.26 ft/yr means over time
Run 14 miles southeast of Port Mansfield, TX's 2.26 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 56 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 116 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.78 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 118 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Watch Hill, RI sits at national rank 390 for erosion (0.33 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1772 miles from here. 2.5 miles up the coast, Port Mansfield, TX shows 1.99 ft/yr of eroding.
Port Mansfield, TX on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.