Most Imposing Landform in Each U.S. State, According to Jut / Base-to-Peak Height and Base-to-Peak Steepness

by
u/Gigitoe

Jut is a topographic metric that describes a landform’s rise above surroundings and impressiveness.

A landform with a jut of X is as imposing as vertical cliff of height X.
For example, a vertical cliff of height 100 ft, a 45° slope of height
141 ft, and a 30° slope of height 200 ft would all measure a jut of 100
ft and be considered equally imposing. Detailed description of how jut works

A landform’s jut can be broken down into its base-to-peak height and base-to-peak steepness**.**
For example, Half Dome’s jut of 3,781 ft corresponds to a rise of 4,717
ft at an angle of 53.3° above its base in Yosemite Valley.

Jut detects impressive features that fly under the radar with other topographic metrics such as elevation and prominence. For example, the highest-elevation feature in Delaware (Ebright Azimuth – image)
barely rises above its surroundings at all, as its surroundings are of
similar elevation. Meanwhile, the highest-jut feature in Delaware (image) is a spectacular near-vertical cliff with a height of over 150 feet. How is jut different from prominence?
Prominence is a bit of a misnomer; a more suitable name for it is
“independence.” That’s because it determines whether a point rises
independently enough to be considered a mountain summit, rather than a
subpeak or non-summit point (such as a cliff or ridge). The
aforementioned cliff in Delaware and the rim of the Grand Canyon would
measure a prominence of 0 by virtue of not being mountain summits, but
they would measure a high jut due to their significant rise above their
surroundings. When you describe a mountain as “prominent,” most likely
what you mean is that it has a high jut.

Website for searching jut of mountains | my research paper introducing jut | interactive map color-coded by jut

This map is made possible with 3DEP 10m DEM, Google Earth Engine, and MapChart.