The term ‘alluvium’ is derived from the Latin alluvius, meaning ‘washed against,’ and refers to subaerial deposits of riverine sediments. Typically alluvium is composed of clays, silts, sands, gravels and occasional cobbles, and it frequently contains a significant admixture of organic materials. It is often poorly sorted, and is characterized by substantial variations in particle shape, though some degree of rounding is almost always evident. It is found in association with virtually all channels in which water is present, or in which water has existed at some time in the past. Thus the term ‘alluvial channel’ is used as a generic name for all channels that derive their form in some part from the action of flowing water, regardless of whether they are perennial or ephemeral features.
A number of distinctive landforms are associated with alluvium, including alluvial fans, braided channels, deltas, meander cutoffs, levees, point bars, and terraces (Marzo and Puigdefabergas, 1993). The...
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Bibliography
Marzo, M., and Puigdefabergas, C., 1993. Alluvial Sedimentation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Miall, A. D., 1996. The Geology of Fluvial Deposits: Sedimentary Facies, Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology. New York: Springer-Verlag.
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© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Bampton, M. (1999). Alluvium. In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_12
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