The Natural Amenities Scale: Conceptual and Empirical Advancements in Measuring Rural Natural Amenities in the United States

We present an updated Natural Amenities Scale that modernizes and expands the foundational 1999 index developed by the USDA Economic Research Service. Natural amenities—features such as climate, land cover, water resources, and terrain—continue to shape residential preferences, migration patterns, and regional development. Substantial advances in environmental data, along with shifting policy and demographic contexts, necessitate a revised scale that reflects contemporary conditions and supports modern research applications. The updated index incorporates high-resolution climate, land-cover, and terrain data from 1990–2020, emphasizes scientifically grounded thresholds of climatic comfort, and includes new measures such as forest cover and refined water-area calculations. It expands geographic coverage to all U.S. counties and census tracts, addressing past limitations related to boundary definitions and incomplete spatial coverage. Using a transparent additive framework with min-max rescaling, the scale preserves interpretability while improving accuracy, spatial detail, and conceptual grounding. This report documents the methodological decisions behind the updated scale, including variable selection, data processing, and index construction. It also outlines key differences from the 1999 edition and discusses implications for research on migration, economic development, environmental amenities, and community well-being. The resulting dataset will be released as a publicly available ERS data product at the county level. The updated scale is designed for reproducibility and future maintenance as environmental data and policy needs continue to evolve.