San Clemente, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 7.1 miles southeast of San Clemente, CA?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 7.1 miles southeast of San Clemente, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "San Clemente" means on this page
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 San Clemente, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 33.36, -117.55. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California 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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 101 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 50% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.2 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, 0 ft/yr, would place it 774 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 National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 1058 nationally for growth belongs to Dunes City, OR, 810 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.67 ft/yr. 1.8 miles away, San Clemente, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near San Clemente: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.