Mexican Plateau
arid-to-semiarid plateau across northern and central Mexico
The Central Mexican Plateau, also known as the Mexican Altiplano (Spanish: Altiplano mexicano), is a large arid-to-semiarid plateau occupying much of northern and central Mexico. Averaging 1,825 m (5,988 ft) above sea level, it extends from the United States border in the north to the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the south, and is bounded by the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental to the west and east, respectively.
A low east–west mountain range in the state of Zacatecas divides the plateau into northern and southern sections. These two sections, called the Northern Plateau (Mesa del Norte) and Central Plateau (Mesa Central), are now generally regarded by geographers as sections of one plateau.
The Mexican Plateau is mostly covered by deserts and xeric shrublands, with pine-oak forests covering the surrounding mountain ranges and forming sky islands on some of the interior ranges. The Mexican Altiplano is one of six distinct physiographic sections of the Basin and Range Province, which in turn is part of the Intermontane Plateaus physiographic division.
In phytogeography, the Sonoran Desert is within the Sonoran Floristic Province of the Madrean Region in southwestern North America, part of the Holarctic realm of the northern Western Hemisphere.
While the plateau stretches from north to south, the southern east–west arc of the Central Mexican Plateau from Jalisco to Veracruz states historically as well as today has served as the population nexus of the Mexican nation, it is home to its biggest metro areas of Guadalajara, León, Querétaro, Morelia, Mexico City, Toluca, Cuernavaca, and Puebla.
Geography
The Mesa del Norte or northern plateau averages 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) in elevation above mean sea level and extends south from the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) through the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí. Various narrow, isolated ridges cross the Mesa del Norte and numerous depressions also dot the region, the largest of which is the Bolsón de Mapimí.
“Mexican Plateau” enters the record as arid-to-semiarid plateau across northern and central Mexico. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mexican, Plateau and arid-to-semiarid can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1753873. Authority coordinates are 24.000, -103.000. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mexican Plateau” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.