Port Sulphur, LA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 12.9 miles south of Port Sulphur, LA
8.84 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 12.9 miles south of Port Sulphur, LA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 88.4 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Port Sulphur, LA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 29.33°N, 89.80°W. 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.
25 years at this rate
If 8.84 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 12.9 miles south of Port Sulphur, LA would retreat roughly 221 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
Averaging 74 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 2.37 ft/yr either side. This segment ranks 26 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 137 nationally for erosion belongs to Port Mansfield, TX, 497 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.99 ft/yr, 0.2x this stretch's rate. Empire, LA, 2.7 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading severe erosion at 5.31 ft/yr.
Port Sulphur, LA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.