Outwash plain in the context of "Sand dunes"

Fluvioglacial landforms or glaciofluvial landforms are those that result from the associated erosion and deposition of sediments caused by glacial meltwater. Glaciers contain suspended sediment loads, much of which is initially picked up from the underlying landmass. Landforms are shaped by glacial erosion through processes such as glacial quarrying, abrasion, and meltwater. Glacial meltwater contributes to the erosion of bedrock through both mechanical and chemical processes.Fluvio-glacial processes can occur on the surface and within the glacier. The deposits that happen within the glacier are revealed after the entire glacier melts or partially retreats. Fluvio-glacial landforms and erosional surfaces include: outwash plains, kames, kame terraces, kettle holes, eskers, varves, and proglacial lakes.

Meltwater streams and formed by glaciers, especially in warmer seasons. Supra-glacial streams, those above the glacial surface, and subglacial streams, those beneath the glacial surface. At the interface of the glacier and the underlying land surface, the immense weight of the glacier causes ice to melt and produces subglacial meltwater streams. These streams under immense pressure and at high velocities along with the overlying weight of the glacier itself are able to carve into landscapes and pluck sediment from the ground. This sediment is transported as the glacier advances. In warmer seasons, the glacier diminishes and retreats. This process leaves behind dropped sediment in the form of depositional landforms. The two processes of advancement and retreat have the power to transform a landscape and leave behind a series of landforms that give great insight into past glacial presence and behavior. Landforms that result from these processes include moraines, kames, kettles, eskers, drumlins, plains, and proglacial lakes.

A proglacial river is a river that flows from the margin of a glacier. These rivers are strongly affected by the highly-seasonal water supply from the glacier and by the large supply of sediment that arrives at the glacier terminus. This high sediment supply often makes them steep and braided. Many modern proglacial rivers drain glaciers in the mountain ranges of Alaska and the Himalayas. Past and present proglacial rivers in front of large ice sheets deposited large outwash plains of sediment.

In geology, drift is a name for all sediment (clay, silt, sand, gravel, boulders) transported by a glacier and deposited directly by or from the ice, or by glacial meltwater. Drift is often subdivided into unstratified (unsorted) drift (glacial till) that forms moraines and stratified drift (glaciolacustrine and fluvioglacial sediments) that accumulates as stratified and sorted sediments in the form of outwash plains, eskers, kames, varves, and so forth. The term drift clay is a synonym for boulder clay. Both are archaic terms for glacial tills with a fine-grained matrix.

In the United Kingdom, drift is also applied as a general term for all surficial, unconsolidated, rock debris and sediment that is moved from one place to accumulate in another and mapped separately or otherwise differentiated from underlying bedrock. In this usage, drift includes a wide variety of deposits, e.g. loess, glacial till, river deposits, colluvium, and so forth, of Quaternary age. However, this term is most commonly used to specifically describe glacial deposits.

Lake Pedder, once a glacial outwash lake, is a man-made impoundment and diversion lake located in South West Tasmania, Australia. In addition to its natural catchment from the Frankland Range, the lake is formed by the 1972 damming of the Serpentine and Huon Rivers by the Hydro-Electric Commission for the purpose of hydroelectric power generation. Consequently, the lake is also known, somewhat derisively, as the Huon-Serpentine Impoundment.

As a result, the flooded Lake Pedder now has a surface area around 242 square kilometres (93 sq mi), making it Tasmania's second-largest lake.