Watch Hill, RI Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.8 miles west of Watch Hill, RI
The coast 1.8 miles west of Watch Hill, RI has been retreating at a measured 0.81 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 8.1 feet over the last decade.
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 Watch Hill, RI. Centered near 41.31°N, 71.88°W. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, 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.
25 years at this rate
If 0.81 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 1.8 miles west of Watch Hill, RI would retreat roughly 20 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 26 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.2 ft/yr. This segment ranks 220 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Forked River, NJ, 154 miles away, ranks 207 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.93 ft/yr, 1.1x this stretch's rate. 1.7 miles away, Watch Hill, RI is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.33 ft/yr.
One address near Watch Hill: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.