Solvang, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 8.4 miles south of Solvang, CA?
Nothing alarming measured 8.4 miles south of Solvang, CA: whatever shift USGS's transects picked up here is too small to call reliably one way or the other, which this site reports as "no significant trend" rather than forcing a direction.
The grain of this number
Solvang, CA is the nearest named place, 8.4 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: 34.47, -120.15. 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
3 transects feed this segment's number; 33% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.11 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, 0.03 ft/yr, would place it 803 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Santiago, WA sits at national rank 1143 for growth (1.54 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 910 miles from here. 2.4 miles up the coast, Solvang, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just Solvang itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.