Sanibel, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1 miles southeast of Sanibel, FL
The coast 1 miles southeast of Sanibel, FL 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 Sanibel, FL into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 26.44°N, 82.10°W. The survey behind it runs to 2001, in USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
What backs this reading up
135 transects feed this segment's number; 16% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.56 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.31 ft/yr reading would land it 966 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Sarita, TX, 944 miles away, ranks 1087 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.88 ft/yr. 3.1 miles up the coast, Sanibel, FL shows 0.99 ft/yr of accreting.
One address near Sanibel: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.