Santa Cruz, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.6 miles south of Santa Cruz, CA?
1.6 miles south of Santa Cruz, CA: USGS's transects didn't pick up a trend here that beats the survey's own uncertainty. That's the majority case nationally, and for this stretch specifically it means the coast is holding, not that the data failed to find anything.
What "Santa Cruz" means on this page
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Santa Cruz, CA. Centered near 36.95°N, 122.04°W. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California 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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 17 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.43 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.42 ft/yr reading would land it 343 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Qui-nai-elt Village, WA, 720 miles away, ranks 1112 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.04 ft/yr. 2.4 miles up the coast, Twin Lakes, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Santa Cruz itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.