The Most Rugged Regions in the Zion National Park Area

Domain relief and steepness (DRS) quantifies the ruggedness of a given region. I applied DRS to the Zion National Park area in Utah to determine the most rugged portions of that area with various given sizes. The results are given below in tabular form, with each entry linking to a KML file for displaying the corresponding region in Google Earth or similar program. All values are appproximate. Areas and DRS values should generally be accurate to within 5%, but I have not made a detailed study of the accuracy of the calculations. Here is a somewhat old explanation of ruggedness (now called DRS).

Size (km^2)	DRS (m)	Notes
1.5	193	The West Temple
55.4	136	Mount Kinesava to Temple of Sinawava
443	83	Main Zion Canyon and Kolob Canyons

Acknowledgements: DRS is based on ORS; see the main ORS page for the relevant acknowledgements. DRS itself was developed by David Metzler and Edward Earl. All DRS calculations on these pages are by David Metzler.

Back to the main DRS (ruggedness) page Back to the main ORS page

Questions and comments welcome:

metzler (at) aa (dot) edu