Mesa in the context of "Hillock"

The Valley of Mexico (Spanish: Valle de México; Nahuatl languages: Anahuac, lit. 'Land Between the Waters'), sometimes also called Basin of Mexico, is a highlands plateau in central Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico was a centre for several pre-Columbian civilizations including Teotihuacan, the Toltec, and the Aztec Empire. The valley used to contain five interconnected lakes called Lake Zumpango, Lake Xaltocan (Nahuatl languages: Xāltocān), Lake Xochimilco, Lake Chalco and the largest, Lake Texcoco, covering about 1,500 square kilometers (580 sq mi) of the valley floor. When the Spaniards arrived in the Valley of Mexico, it had one of the highest population concentrations in the world with about one million people. After the conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Spaniards rebuilt the largest and most dominant city, Mēxihco Tenōchtitlan, renaming it Ciudad de México (Mexico City) and over time began to drain the lakes' waters to control flooding.

The Valley of Mexico is located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. The valley contains most of the Mexico City metropolitan area, as well as parts of the State of Mexico, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, and Puebla. The Basin of Mexico covers approximately 9,600 km (3,700 sq mi) in the NNE-SSW direction with length to width dimensions of approximately 125 km (78 miles) to 75 km (47 miles) The Valley of Mexico can be subdivided into four basins, but the largest and most-studied is the area that contains Mexico City. This section of the valley in particular is colloquially referred to as the "Valley of Mexico".The valley has a minimum elevation of 2,200 meters (7,200 ft) above sea level and is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes that reach elevations of over 5,000 meters (16,000 ft). It is an enclosed valley with no natural outlet for water to flow to the sea although there is a gap to the north where there is a high mesa but no high mountain peaks. Within this vulnerable watershed all the native fishes were extinct by the end of the 20th century. Hydrologically, the valley has three features. The first feature is the lakebeds of five now-extinct lakes, which are located in the southernmost and largest of the four sub-basins. The other two features are piedmont, and the mountainsides that collect the precipitation that eventually flows to the lake area. These last two are found in all four of the sub-basins of the valley. Today, the Valley drains through a series of artificial canals to the Tula River, and eventually the Páruco River and the Gulf of Mexico. Seismic activity is frequent here, and the valley is an earthquake-prone zone.

Pareidolia (/ˌpærɪˈdoʊliə, ˌpɛər-/; also US: /ˌpɛəraɪ-/) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a specific but common type of apophenia (the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things or ideas).

Common examples include perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations; seeing faces in inanimate objects; or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit. The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music in random noise, such as that produced by air conditioners or by fans. Face pareidolia has also been demonstrated in rhesus macaques.

In geomorphology, a butte (/bjuːt/ BEWT) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word butte comes from the French word butte (French: [byt]), meaning 'knoll' (of any size); its use is prevalent in the Western United States, including the Southwest, where mesa (Spanish for 'table') is used for the larger landform.

Due to their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. To differentiate the two landforms, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height.

Canyonlands National Park is a national park of the United States located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 12, 1964.

The park is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the combined rivers—the Green and Colorado—which carved two large canyons into the Colorado Plateau. While these areas share a primitive desert atmosphere, each retains its own character. Author Edward Abbey, a frequent visitor, described the Canyonlands as "the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth—there is nothing else like it anywhere."

Cerro Baúl (Spanish: Cerro "hill", Spanish: Baúl "trunk" (i.e. a place to store treasured items)) is an ancient political outpost and ceremonial center settlement in Peru established by the pre-Incan empire called the Wari. Cerro Baúl is a terraced mountain, 2000 feet above its surroundings, with a settlement on the cliff tops themselves and in the immediate surroundings. Among other finds are the remnants of a brewery and large buildings that may have been used for ceremonial feasting. There is evidence of damage that has been interpreted as a careful and deliberate destruction, by the city's own people, of several buildings prior to the mesa's being vacated.

The Diomede Islands (/ˌdaɪ.əˈmiːdiː/; Russian: острова́ Диоми́да, romanized: ostrova Diomida), also known in Russia as Gvozdev Islands (Russian: острова́ Гво́здева, romanized: ostrova Gvozdeva), consist of two rocky, mesa-like islands. One is the Russian island of Big Diomede (part of Chukotka). The other is the U.S. island of Little Diomede (part of Alaska). The Diomede Islands are located in the middle of the Bering Strait between mainland Alaska and Siberia. At their closest points, the two islands are approximately 2.4 miles away from each other.

Because they are separated by the International Date Line, Big Diomede is almost a day ahead of Little Diomede; due to locally defined time zones, Big Diomede is 21 hours ahead of Little Diomede (20 in summer). Because of this, the islands are sometimes called Tomorrow Island (Big Diomede) and Yesterday Island (Little Diomede).

Palo Duro Canyon is a canyon system of the Caprock Escarpment located in the Texas Panhandle near the cities of Amarillo and Canyon. The second largest canyon system in the United States, it is roughly 25–40 mi (40–64 km) long and has an average width of 6 mi (9.7 km), but reaches a width of 20 mi (32 km) at places. Its depth is around 800 ft (240 m), but in some locations, valley bottom to surrounding hills increases to 1,000 ft (300 m). Palo Duro Canyon (from the Spanish meaning "hard stick") has been named "The Grand Canyon of Texas" both for its size and for its dramatic geological features, including the multicolored layers of rock and steep mesa walls, which are similar to those in the Grand Canyon. It is part of Palo Duro Canyon State Park. The State Park had 442,242 visitors in 2022.