The American Southwest region consists of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma, which have for the most part semi-arid and arid climates. Despite the similar weather throughout the region, the geographical features vary from mountains and plateaus to deserts and canyons.

The Southwest region has different types of landforms. One of them is a canyon. Canyons are like a valley, but with deeper, more narrow sides. A mesa is a plateau, but smaller and more rounded at the bottom. A butte is a mesa, but smaller.

          To the east in Texas, the land is mostly deserts . To the west, there are tall Rocky Mountains. The Rio Grande river is a border between the US and Mexico.  At the end of the Rio Grande it all empties out into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Colorado Plateau is the major plateau in the southwest. It is in Arizona and New Mexico. A majority of the plateau is a mile above sea level. The Southwest is known for the geographic landscape of the Grand Canyon, which is located in Arizona. It is 217 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest, and 1 mile deep in some places.

The Grand Canyon is visited by almost 4 million people each year. It is one of the nicest natural landmarks in the nation. It was formed when the Colorado river wore away at the rock and over millions of years, it carved the walls of the Grand Canyon. This process is called erosion.