Port St. Joe, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 8.8 miles south of Port St. Joe, FL
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 8.8 miles south of Port St. Joe, FL, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.72 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 17.2 feet over the last decade.
What "Port St. Joe" means on this page
Port St. Joe, FL is the nearest named place, 8.8 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: 29.70, -85.36. The survey behind it runs to 2001, in USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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.
What 1.72 ft/yr means over time
Run 8.8 miles south of Port St. Joe, FL's 1.72 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 43 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
199 transects feed this segment's number; 65% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±1.02 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 147. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 118 nationally for erosion belongs to Port Mansfield, TX, 759 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.26 ft/yr, 1.3x this stretch's rate. Port St. Joe, FL, 1.9 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading severe erosion at 7.6 ft/yr.
One address near Port St. Joe: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.