Virginia Beach, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 4.3 miles southeast of Virginia Beach, VA
1.15 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 4.3 miles southeast of Virginia Beach, VA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 11.5 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Virginia Beach, VA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 36.75°N, 75.96°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 1.15 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 4.3 miles southeast of Virginia Beach, VA would retreat roughly 29 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
108 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.41 ft/yr. This segment ranks 188 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: South Padre Island, TX, 1439 miles away, ranks 91 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 3.17 ft/yr, 2.8x this stretch's rate. 2.5 miles away, Virginia Beach, VA is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.65 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Virginia Beach itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.