| Highlands and Plateaux |
| A plateau is an extensive, mainly level, area of high ground. The ground may have been recently uplifted and be cut by steep canyons, as with the Colorado Plateau in the southwest USA . An older plateau may have broader valleys separating areas of high ground called "mesas". Later still, only small remnants of the original surface called "buttes" may remain on an eroded plain.
Buttes in Monument Valley, Arizona. Ethiopian Highlands are plateaux lying either side of the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. Intermontane plateau are completely, or almost completely, surrounded by mountains, as with the Tibetan Plateau.
The Tibetan Plateau rises over 5,000 metres (13,650 feet) above sea level. A piedmont plateau, such as Patagonia in South America, lies between a mountainous area and a plain or ocean. A continental plateau, or tableland, such as the Karoo of South Africa, rises abruptly form lowlands or the sea. The dry plateau of the Karoo, South Africa. |
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