Provincetown, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 9.6 miles southeast of Provincetown, MA
0.69 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 9.6 miles southeast of Provincetown, MA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 6.9 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Provincetown, MA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 41.98°N, 70.02°W. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
25 years at this rate
If 0.69 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 9.6 miles southeast of Provincetown, MA would retreat roughly 17 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 44 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: 0.31 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 245 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Rank 89 nationally for erosion belongs to South Padre Island, TX, 1881 miles from this stretch, measured at 3.26 ft/yr, 4.7x this stretch's rate. 2 miles up the coast, Provincetown, MA shows 0.63 ft/yr of eroding.
Provincetown, MA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.