Salisbury, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.8 miles northeast of Salisbury, MA?
The coast 1.8 miles northeast of Salisbury, 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 Salisbury, MA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 42.85°N, 70.82°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.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 110 individual transects averaged together, 32% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.35 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.11 ft/yr reading would land it 858 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Rank 1118 nationally for growth belongs to Marina del Rey, CA, 2615 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.07 ft/yr. 3.3 miles away, Hampton Beach, NH is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Salisbury: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.