Santa Monica, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1.7 miles northwest of Santa Monica, CA?
The coast 1.7 miles northwest of Santa Monica, CA is actually gaining ground, not losing it: USGS's transects measure 1.21 feet of accretion a year here, sediment building up rather than washing away. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 12.1 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
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 Monica, CA. Centered near 34.03°N, 118.52°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.
25 years at this rate
Holding the 1.21 ft/yr accretion rate 1.7 miles northwest of Santa Monica, CA for 25 years would add roughly 30 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
24 transects feed this segment's number; 0% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.32 ft/yr either side. This segment ranks 1124 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 1077 nationally for growth belongs to Florence, OR, 749 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.8 ft/yr, 0.7x this stretch's rate. 1.9 miles up the coast, Santa Monica, CA shows 0.21 ft/yr of accreting.
Santa Monica, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.