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Western US Ruggedness Raw Values

Metadata Updated: January 8, 2026

"Vector Ruggedness Measure (VRM) measures terrain ruggedness as the variation in three-dimensional orientation of grid cells within a neighborhood. Vector analysis is used to calculate the dispersion of vectors normal (orthogonal) to grid cells within the specified neighborhood. This method effectively captures variability in slope and aspect into a single measure. Ruggedness values in the output raster can range from 0 (no terrain variation) to 1 (complete terrain variation). Typical values for natural terrains range between 0 and about 0.4. VRM was adapted from a method first proposed by Hobson (1972). VRM appears to decouple terrain ruggedness from slope better than current ruggedness indices, such as TRI or LSRI. See Sappington et al. 2007, for further details" (Sappington 2012). The code from the original tool was no longer compatible with current software versioning. Therefore, we updated the existing code for current software standards.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date January 8, 2026
Metadata Updated Date January 8, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date January 8, 2026
Metadata Updated Date January 8, 2026
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/USGS_5ab296d2e4b081f61ab4601a
Data Last Modified 2020-08-19T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 3ccbc24e-1fb1-44e5-9f96-3f2b91f395e5
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -133.770087776, 27.3622478263, -101.448805076, 52.008905857
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 356d0f6bf5575b885c36bbef4f4fd8a809b9383c4420b205997e0bc4a374e9c4
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -133.770087776, 27.3622478263, -133.770087776, 52.008905857, -101.448805076, 52.008905857, -101.448805076, 27.3622478263, -133.770087776, 27.3622478263}

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