Topography of the conterminous United States

Topography of the conterminous United States

Potential Natural Vegetation

Geology

Coastal Ranges physiographic province

Cascade-Sierra Mountains Cascades Mount Hood

California central valley

Sierra-Nevada

Sierra-Nevada Yosemite Valley

Lower California

Lower California Dead tilapia fish rot on the mud of the Salton Sea shore

Columbia Plateau The lavas erupted between 17 and 6 million years ago. columbia plateau

Columbia Plateau, Dry Falls State Park, Washington. Erosion of the falls was by the ice age Spokane Floods.

Basin and Range physiographic province The Great Basin defines a region of 520,000 km2 where waters drain into interior, evaporative basins. 40 million years ago there was no Great Basin. Tectonic changes along the Pacific plate boundary, some that would later create the San Andreas Fault Zone, induced lithosphere thinning and stretching, more than doubling the amount of land between the western (Sierra Nevada) and eastern (Wasatch Mountains-Colorado Plateau) edges of the province, and created the present landscape.

Rock glaciers, such as this still-active feature in the cirque under Wheeler Peak (3982 m), Snake Range, NV, are abundant landforms throughout high Great Basin mountains. Connie Millar

Snow persists on high peaks while deserts below remain arid. White Mtn Peak (4344 m) from the Palmetto Range (2830 m), NV. provides an experimental setting for biogeographic research related to MacArthur and Wilson s influential theory on island biogeography.

Colorado Plateau

Colorado Plateau Grand Canyon section

Colorado Plateau Stockfresh river in Canyon Lands, Utah

Moraine Lake Northern Rocky Mountains

Wyoming Basin Sheep Mountain anticline

Middle Rocky Mountains

Southern Rocky Mountains Aspen, CO Moraine Lake

Southern Rocky Mountains Looking northward along the crest of the Sangre de Cristo Range, southern Colorado. Present elevation and relief of the mountains are a consequence of late Cenozoic crustal uplift and deep erosion. Typical alpine landforms include glaciated valleys, cirques, arêtes and horns..

Southern Rocky Mountains San Andres mountains, New Mexico

Great Plains northern

Great Plains southern

Central Lowlands Badland of South Dakota (transition form Great Plains to Central Lowlands

Central Lowlands On the trail from the Murray Hill Scenic Overlook on the Loess Hills Scenic Byway on the Fountainbleu Loop

Smallin Cave in Missouri Ozark Plateaus

Ozark Plateaus Springfield plateau, Arkansas

Ouachita Mountains in 0klahoma

Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas

Interior Low Plateaus Muscatatuck Bottoms contains the largest least-fragmented complex of bottomland forest remaining in Indiana. Several species of oak, as well as hickory and sweetgum, dominate the forest.

Interior Low Plateaus Blue grass region of Kentucky

Interior Low Plateaus Nashville basin

Superior Upland Brockway Mtn, Cooper Harbor, Michigan

New England

St. Lawrence Valley Thousand Islands-NewYork

Adirondack

Appalachian plateaus The Allegheny ( Cumberland in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee) Plateau parallels to the west the Appalachian Mountains from New York to Alabama. cumberland-plateau

Appalachian Allegheny plateau West Virginia

Valley and Ridge View from McAfee's Knob in Virginia

Valley and Ridge Shenandoah valley in Virginia

Valley and Ridge Bristol, Tennessee

Blue Ridge

Piedmont The James River winds its way among Piedmont hills in central Virginia.

Great Falls of the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland, along the Atlantic Seaboard Fall line

Eastern Coastal Plain Aerial view of the Lieutenant River where it empties into the mouth of the Connecticut River in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Long Island Sound. Jerry Monkman

Atlantic Coastal Plain

Atlantic Coastal Plain The southeastern coast, rimmed by a series of barrier islands and spits, separates the mainland coastal plain from a wide, gently sloping offshore

Gulf Coastal Plain Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes consist of a nearly level and slowly drained plain of grassland prairie, salt flats, and cordgrass marshes intermixed with occasional mesquite and acacia. Barrier islands protect the coastline from high winds and the constant buffeting of harsh waves from the Gulf of Mexico.