Western US Ruggedness Raw Values
type: Dataset
description: "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.
issued: 2025-11-20T09:43:28.536611
modified: 20200819
spatial: Location
contact point: Organization
  fn: FRESC Science Data Coordinator
keyword: amerigeo
keyword: amerigeoss
keyword: ckan
keyword: environment
keyword: geo
keyword: geoss
keyword: national
keyword: north-america
keyword: roughness
keyword: ruggedness
keyword: terrain
keyword: united-states
keyword: usgs-5ab296d2e4b081f61ab4601a
keyword: western-north-america
keyword: western-united-states
theme: {geospatial}

Digital Data
type: Distribution
description: Landing page for access to the data
format: XML
issued: 2022-07-28T21:15:21.591407
modified: 2025-11-20T09:43:28.527985
access URL: https://doi.org/10.5066/F76D5S92
media type: application/http

Original Metadata
type: Distribution
description: The metadata original format
format: XML
issued: 2022-07-28T21:15:21.591401
modified: 2025-11-20T09:43:28.527555
access URL: https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/metadata/USGS.5ab296d2e4b081f61ab4601a.xml
media type: text/xml

US Migrating
type: Agent