The United States has an average elevation of roughly 2,500 feet (763m) above sea level, however there is a stark contrast in elevations across the country. Highest states Colorado is the highest state in the United States, with an average elevation of 6,800 feet (2,074m) above sea level. The 10 states with the highest average elevation are all in the western region of the country, as this is, by far, the most mountainous region in the country. The largest mountain ranges in the contiguous western states are the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, and Cascade Range, while the Appalachian Mountains is the longest range in the east - however, the highest point in the U.S. is Denali (Mount McKinley), found in Alaska. Lowest states At just 60 feet above sea level, Delaware is the state with the lowest elevation. Delaware is the second smallest state, behind Rhode Island, and is located on the east coast. Larger states with relatively low elevations are found in the southern region of the country - both Florida and Louisiana have an average elevation of just 100 feet (31m) above sea level, and large sections of these states are extremely vulnerable to flooding and rising sea levels, as well as intermittent tropical storms.

The water-budget components geodatabase contains selected data from maps in the, "Selected Approaches to Estimate Water-Budget Components of the High Plains, 1940 through 1949 and 2000 through 2009" report (Stanton and others, 2011).Data were collected and synthesized from existing climate models including the Parameter-Elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) (Daly and others, 1994), and the Snow accumulation and ablation model (SNOW-17) (Anderson, 2006), and used in soil-water balance models to compute various components of a water budget. The methodologies used to compute the averages and volumes for the data in this geodatabase are slightly different for different components and models.

description: This data set is one of many developed in support of The High Plains Groundwater Availability Project and the USGS Data Series Report: Geodatabase Compilation of Hydrogeologic, Remote Sensing, and Water-Budget-Component data for the High Plains aquifer, 2011 (DS 777). This dataset contains point vector data from the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHD+) 1:100,000 stream polyline data converted into points and attributed with elevation values in feet above sea level.Streams were initially included if they had a mean estimated base flow of more than 10 cubic feet per second (based on streamflow data from long-term streamflow-gaging stations operated by the USGS or the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources). The stream network then was expanded to include selected streams that were deemed hydrogeologically important but had a mean estimated base flow of less than 10 cubic feet per second.; abstract: This data set is one of many developed in support of The High Plains Groundwater Availability Project and the USGS Data Series Report: Geodatabase Compilation of Hydrogeologic, Remote Sensing, and Water-Budget-Component data for the High Plains aquifer, 2011 (DS 777). This dataset contains point vector data from the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHD+) 1:100,000 stream polyline data converted into points and attributed with elevation values in feet above sea level.Streams were initially included if they had a mean estimated base flow of more than 10 cubic feet per second (based on streamflow data from long-term streamflow-gaging stations operated by the USGS or the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources). The stream network then was expanded to include selected streams that were deemed hydrogeologically important but had a mean estimated base flow of less than 10 cubic feet per second.