Plateaus

Hello, this isWild Suzhou. Today, we willtalk about plateaus, which are a type of beautiful and unique landform. First, what is aplateau? A plateau is large, flat piece of land that rises out of the ground.It looks kind of like a table, which is why plateaus are sometimes calledtabletops. Unlike mountains and hills, they don’t slowly rise up out of theground, but look like the land has been pushed up entirely. Plateaus can befound on every continent and take up around a third of the Earth’s surface.They can even be found underwater. There are twotypes of plateaus: dissected plateaus and volcanic plateaus. Dissected plateausform when the earth’s crust moves and a piece of land is pushed upwards.Volcanic plateaus are formed by lava build up in areas after volcaniceruptions. Gradually, theshapes of plateaus can change, usually because of erosion. Erosion is whensystems like water and wind wear down the earth and change its shape. Forexample, there is often a lot of soft rock at the top of plateaus which caneasily erode. Erosion can also eventually split up a plateau into smallersections, called outliers. Rivers can also cut through plateaus and graduallyform valleys. For Wild Suzhou,I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.