Provincetown, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.1 miles west of Provincetown, MA?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 1.1 miles west of Provincetown, MA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Provincetown" means on this page
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Provincetown, MA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 42.05, -70.20. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 226 individual transects averaged together, 48% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.46 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, 0 ft/yr, would place it 769 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Ocean City, NJ, 299 miles away, ranks 1162 of 1211 nationally for growth, 2.2 ft/yr. 2.1 miles away, Provincetown, MA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Provincetown itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.