Smith River, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 3.5 miles northwest of Smith River, CA
3.5 miles northwest of Smith River, CA: 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 Smith River, CA. Centered near 41.95°N, 124.21°W. 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 backs this reading up
Averaging 109 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 3% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.23 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.11 ft/yr reading would land it 864 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 1198 nationally for growth belongs to Ilwaco, WA, 301 miles from this stretch, measured at 5.01 ft/yr. 2.5 miles away, Smith River, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight accretion (beach growing) at 0.19 ft/yr.
One address near Smith River: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.