Sea Bright, NJ Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 0.9 miles southwest of Sea Bright, NJ
0.9 miles southwest of Sea Bright, NJ: 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.
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 Sea Bright, NJ. Centered near 40.35°N, 73.99°W. 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.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 117 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 98% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.7 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.46 ft/yr reading would land it 314 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Kailua, HI, 4956 miles away, ranks 1014 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.46 ft/yr. 3.4 miles up the coast, Highlands, NJ shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Sea Bright, NJ on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.