Materials deposited from water

• Sediment deposited from flowing water is known as alluvium.
• Floodplains are the landforms built by these deposits in the low areas where stream and river overflow.
• Older floodplains now at levels higher than river bottom, as the water cut deeper, are called river terraces.
• If soil-laden water is flowing out of the mountains canyons, it deposits material as it reaches less steep slopes.
• These spread out from the canyon mouth to form fan-shaped alluvial fans.
• Sedimentation in standing water is mostly in lakes. These are lacustrine deposits, lake bottoms.
• Sediments deposited in oceans or reworked by oceans are marine sediments.

Materials deposited by winds

• Wind-transported materials form eolian deposits. Carried materials may be coarse and fine sands, silts and smaller dust-like particles (clays).
• Small-sized soil materials that were wind-deposited, many following the last glacial period are known as loess (low-ess).
• In present day deposits of dominantly silt-sized particles (0.05-0.002mm diameter) are also called loess. Loessial soil materials are mostly 60-90% silt.

Materials deposited from Ice

• The general name for glacial deposits is glacial till. When the ancient ice front melted about as fast as the ice moved, deposits of the sediment built up along the melting boundary, resulting in a series of stony hills at the ice fronts known as terminal moraines.
• Stony ridges also deposited along the outer edges (sides) of the ice mass are known as lateral moraines.
• When the ice front melted faster than it advanced, the glacier shrank and a larger and smoother deposition resulted known as ground moraines (till plains).
• Water gushing from a rapidly melting ice mass carried fairly coarse sand and gravel particles and deposited them in somewhat gently sloping plains at the outer boundaries of the glacier. These are outwash plains.

Sediments moved by gravity

• The collective term for all down slope movements caused by gravity of weathered rock debris and sediments is mass-wasting. The material moved is called colluvium.
• Slowly moving slopes are caused by expansion and contractions of soil are called soil creep. Wetting drying, freezing thawing and temperature changes may aid movement.
• In lubricated conditions, movement may be a flow process. Flow may be form a few centimeters per day (solifluction) to rapid debris flow, mudflow, or earth flow.
• More rapid flow is termed avalanche. The land form for colluvium from these processes could be specified as soil creep colluvium, earthflow colluvium or slide colluvium.