Solvang, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 10.5 miles southeast of Solvang, CA
10.5 miles southeast of Solvang, 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 "Solvang" means on this page
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 Solvang, CA. Centered near 34.46°N, 120.05°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 78 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 99% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.16 ft/yr either side. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.16 ft/yr reading would land it 556 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. For scale: Grayland, WA, 878 miles away, ranks 1173 of 1211 nationally for growth, 2.4 ft/yr. Goleta, CA, 2.9 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Solvang: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.