Salisbury, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 2.9 miles southeast of Salisbury, MA?
The coast 2.9 miles southeast 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.
What "Salisbury" means on this page
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 42.80°N, 70.81°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.
What backs this reading up
95 transects feed this segment's number; 68% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.42 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.15 ft/yr reading would land it 563 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: Newport Beach, CA, 2599 miles away, ranks 1098 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.94 ft/yr. Rowley, MA, 3.4 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Salisbury itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.