Shelter Cove, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 11 miles southeast of Shelter Cove, CA?
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 11 miles southeast of Shelter Cove, CA, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.35 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 3.5 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Shelter Cove, CA is the nearest named place, 11 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: 39.91, -123.93. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
What 0.35 ft/yr means over time
Run 11 miles southeast of Shelter Cove, CA's 0.35 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 9 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 48 individual transects averaged together, 92% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.29 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 376 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: Fort Hunter Liggett, CA, 308 miles away, ranks 319 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.46 ft/yr, 1.3x this stretch's rate. 1.8 miles up the coast, Leggett, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Shelter Cove: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.