San Diego, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 9 miles southwest of San Diego, CA
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 9 miles southwest of San Diego, CA, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What this reading actually covers
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 Diego, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 32.76, -117.25. 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
51 transects feed this segment's number; 16% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.41 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, 0.13 ft/yr, would place it 879 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. For scale: Sanibel, FL, 2143 miles away, ranks 1176 of 1211 nationally for growth, 2.71 ft/yr. 2.3 miles up the coast, San Diego, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near San Diego: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.