Scituate, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 1.5 miles northeast of Scituate, MA
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 1.5 miles northeast of Scituate, MA, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.17 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 1.7 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Scituate, MA is the nearest named place, 1.5 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 42.20, -70.72. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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 0.17 ft/yr means over time
Run 1.5 miles northeast of Scituate, MA's 0.17 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 4 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 7 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.09 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 538 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Rank 98 nationally for erosion belongs to South Padre Island, TX, 1859 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.9 ft/yr, many times over this stretch's own rate. 0.9 miles up the coast, North Scituate, MA shows 0.26 ft/yr of eroding.
One address near Scituate: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.