Virginia Beach, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 3.4 miles northeast of Virginia Beach, VA
The coast 3.4 miles northeast of Virginia Beach, VA has been retreating at a measured 0.54 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 5.4 feet over the last decade.
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 Virginia Beach, VA. Centered near 36.81°N, 75.98°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.
25 years at this rate
If 0.54 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 3.4 miles northeast of Virginia Beach, VA would retreat roughly 14 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
Averaging 70 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 93% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.49 ft/yr. This segment ranks 290 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Nantucket, MA, 442 miles away, ranks 102 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 2.71 ft/yr, 5.0x this stretch's rate. 1.8 miles up the coast, Virginia Beach, VA shows 0.65 ft/yr of eroding.
Virginia Beach, VA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.