Sarasota, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 3.6 miles west of Sarasota, FL?
3.6 miles west of Sarasota, FL: 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 this reading actually covers
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 Sarasota, FL. Centered near 27.35°N, 82.60°W. USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2001, 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.
How solid is this number
Averaging 134 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 88% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.79 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.64 ft/yr reading would land it 251 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Warrenton, OR sits at national rank 1196 for growth (4.64 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 2593 miles from here. Longboat Key, FL, 2.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Sarasota itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.