ABSTRACT
Geologists and geomorphologists are beginning to require certain kinds of information which heretofore have been of little importance to the field investigator. Part of these needs for new information stems from the desire to relate topographic characteristics of areas to their underlying geology and to the effects of active geologic processes. In the description of natural terrains, roughness parameters should be established that can be used to describe surface irregularities ranging from a few tenths of an inch to several tens of feet. The bump frequency parameters are mean and variance statistics describing size distributions of surface irregularities. The chapter describes a surface-roughness analysis of an area within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration test site at Pisgah Crater, California. Maps of the bump frequency and distribution of planes parameters, as the surface area ratio, tend to delineate the major geologic patterns in the study area.
