Santa Monica, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 0.4 miles southeast of Santa Monica, CA
Unusual good news for this stretch: the shoreline 0.4 miles southeast of Santa Monica, CA has grown by a measured 1.85 feet a year on average, per USGS's long-term transect data for this section. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 18.5 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
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 Santa Monica, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 34.01, -118.49. USGS's California assessment last surveyed this stretch through 1852-2016, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
What 1.85 ft/yr means over time
Holding the 1.85 ft/yr accretion rate 0.4 miles southeast of Santa Monica, CA for 25 years would add roughly 46 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 104 individual transects averaged together, 0% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.33 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 1152 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Warrenton, OR, 889 miles away, ranks 1196 of 1211 nationally for growth, 4.64 ft/yr, 2.5x this stretch's rate. Santa Monica, CA, 2.1 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading accretion (beach growing) at 1.21 ft/yr.
Santa Monica, CA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.