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alluvial plain
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region on which rivers have deposited sediment
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- Alluvial plains
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- purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ENVO_00000258
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Encyclopedic overview
Floodplain (centre) within the alluvial plain of the Waimakariri River, New Zealand (part of the Canterbury Plains). A small, incised alluvial plain from Red Rock Canyon State Park (California).
An alluvial plain is a plain (an essentially flat landform) created by the deposition of sediment over a long period by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A floodplain is part of the process, being the smaller area over which the rivers flood at a particular time. In contrast, the alluvial plain is the larger area representing the region over which the floodplains have shifted over geological time.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “alluvial plain” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.