Plateaus, Mesas, and Tableland Formation

Geographers distinguish highland tablelands mainly by scale and origin. A plateau is a broad, elevated area of relatively flat land, typically covering many thousands of square kilometers, that stands well above the surrounding terrain on at least one side; a mesa is a smaller, isolated flat-topped landform bounded by steep cliffs, wider than it is tall; and a butte is a narrower, taller erosional remnant of a mesa, the product of continued weathering stripping away its edges until little more than a column or small tower remains. This size progression, plateau to mesa to butte, is visible in classic sequence across the Colorado Plateau of the American Southwest, where formations such as those in Monument Valley illustrate each stage of the same ongoing erosional process acting on nearly horizontal sedimentary rock layers.