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Mesa

Elevated area of land with a flat top and sides, usually much wider than buttes

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Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast and iconic sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. It is located on the s
J Brew · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Unlike a plateau, which is a broader, elevated region that may not have horizontal bedrock (e.g., Tibetan Plateau), a mesa is defined by flat-lying strata and steep-sided isolation. Large, flat-topped plateaus with horizontal strata, less isolated and often part of extensive plateau systems, are called tablelands. A butte is a smaller, eroded mesa with a limited summit, while a cuesta has a gentle dip slope and one steep escarpment due to tilted strata.

Names, definition and etymology

As noted by geologist Kirk Bryan in 1922, mesas "...stand distinctly above the surrounding country, as a table stands above the floor upon which it rests". It is from this appearance that the term mesa was adopted from the Spanish word mesa, meaning "table".

A mesa is similar to, but has a more extensive summit area than, a butte. There is no agreed size limit that separates mesas from either buttes or plateaus. For example, the flat-topped mountains which are known as mesas in the Cockburn Range of North Western Australia have areas as large as 350 km2 (140 mi2). In contrast, flat topped hills with areas as small as 0.1 km2 (0.039 mi2) in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, Germany, are described as mesas.

Less strictly, a very broad, flat-topped, usually isolated hill or mountain of moderate height bounded on at least one side by a steep cliff or slope and representing an erosion remnant also have been called mesas.

In the English-language geomorphic and geologic literature, other terms for mesa have also been used. For example, in the Roraima region of Venezuela, the traditional name, tepui, from the local Pomón language, and the term table mountains have been used to describe local flat-topped mountains. Similar landforms in Australia are known as tablehills, table-top hills, tent hills, or jump ups (jump-ups). The German term Tafelberg has also been used in the English scientific literature in the past.

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Source and licence. Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mesa” (this version, 2026-08-20) by its contributors, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Lablypedia has left out its tables, references and most pictures, and linked it to other Lablypedia articles.