On the North American continent, the interior lowlands is the broad, generally flat areas in the center of the continent extending from the north Canadian Arctic shores eastward and southward to Texas.

In Canada, the interior lowlands extend from the north Canadian Arctic shores of the Northwest Territories southward through northeast British Columbia and much of north Alberta, central Saskatchewan, a part of southwest Manitoba and parts of southern Ontario.

The Canadian prairies are part of a vast sedimentary plain, which in the southern parts of the provinces are generally arable agricultural land used for extensive grain farming.

Then the interior lowlands cross into the United States and include parts of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, western New York, western Pennsylvania, northern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, northern Missouri, eastern Kansas, northeastern Oklahoma and a large part of northeast Texas.

The name is used in regional geologic and physiographic descriptions of North America and the conterminous United States. From the tectonic view, the continental Interior Lowlands are areas largely undisturbed by mountain building in past geologic time. They extend from central Saskatchewan, in Canada, south to the rim of the Coastal Plain and are bounded by the Great Plains on the west, the Canadian Shield on the north and east, and the Appalachian Mountains on the east.