Geographic distribution

Plateaus of one type or another can be found on most continents. Those caused by thermal expansion of the lithosphere are usually associated with hot spots. The Yellowstone Plateau in the United States, the Massif Central in France, and the Ethiopian Plateau in Africa are prominent examples. Most hot spots are associated with the upwelling of hot material in the asthenosphere, and the hot upwelling not only heats the overlying lithosphere and melts holes through it to produce volcanoes but also uplifts the lithosphere. The relationship of such plateaus to hot spots ensures both a wide distribution of plateaus and an absence of belts of plateaus or of interrelated plateaus.

Some plateaus, like the Colorado Plateau, the Ordos Plateau in northern China, or the East African Highlands, do not seem to be related to hot spots or to vigorous upwelling in the asthenosphere but appear to be underlain by unusually hot material. The reason for localized heating beneath such areas is poorly understood, and thus an explanation for the distribution of plateaus of that type is not known.

Plateaus that were formed by crustal shortening and internal drainage lie within major mountain belts and generally in arid climates. They can be found in North Africa, Turkey, Iran, and Tibet, where the African, Arabian, and Indian continental masses have collided with the Eurasian continent. The Altiplano lies between the Cordillera Occidental composed of volcanoes and the Cordillera Oriental beneath which the Brazilian shield is being thrust. All those areas have undergone crustal shortening during Cenozoic time (66 million years ago to the present), and in each case the surface of the plateau includes both strongly deformed pre-Cenozoic rocks and very young flat-lying sediment.

There are some plateaus whose origin is not known. Those of the Iberian Peninsula and north-central Mexico exhibit a topography that is largely high and relatively flat. Crustal shortening clearly occurred in Mexico during the Late Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic (between 100.5 million and 23 million years ago) and in some parts of Spain during the Cenozoic, but the high elevations in either case do not seem to be supported by thick crust. Those areas are probably underlain by a hot uppermost mantle, but proof of that is still lacking.

Volcanic plateaus are commonly associated with eruptions that occurred during the Cenozoic or Mesozoic. Eruptions on the scale needed to produce volcanic plateaus are rare, and none seems to have taken place in recent time. The volcanic eruptions that produce lava plateaus tend to be associated with hot spots. For example, the basalts of the Deccan Traps, which cover the Deccan plateau in India, were erupted 60–65 million years ago when India lay in the Southern Hemisphere, probably over the same hot spot that presently underlies the volcanic island of Réunion. The Serra Geral basalts that cap a plateau of the same name on the Atlantic coast of Brazil were erupted some 135 million years ago, before Africa and South America separated from each other and when the future continental margins overlay the hot spot now beneath the volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic Ocean. In North America the Columbia River basalts may have been ejected over the same hot spot that underlies the Yellowstone area today. Lava plateaus of the scale of those three are not common features on Earth.