Provincetown, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 2.4 miles south of Provincetown, MA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 2.4 miles south 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 this reading actually covers
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: 42.02, -70.19. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 14 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 21% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.26 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, 0.23 ft/yr, would place it 937 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. Virginia Beach, VA sits at national rank 1017 for growth (0.47 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 471 miles from here. 2.1 miles up the coast, Provincetown, MA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Provincetown: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.