Rowley, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 4.1 miles northeast of Rowley, MA
The coast 4.1 miles northeast of Rowley, MA shows no statistically significant trend either way. USGS's transects measured a rate here, but it's smaller than the survey's own margin of error for this stretch, so calling it "eroding" or "growing" would overstate what the data actually shows.
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 Rowley, MA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 42.75°N, 70.80°W. 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.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 114 individual transects averaged together, 82% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.23 ft/yr either side. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.19 ft/yr reading would land it 510 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Port St. Joe, FL, 1203 miles away, ranks 1035 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.56 ft/yr. 2.7 miles away, Ipswich, MA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.26 ft/yr.
Rowley, MA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.