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Combine filters to find formations by what shaped them, where they occur, and how long they take to form.

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False-color satellite image of sediment spreading from the Mississippi River delta into the Gulf of Mexico.
River Delta Deposition

How River Deltas Develop

A river delta forms where a river slows down and spreads out as it meets a sea, lake, or ocean, dropping the sediment it has carried and gradually building new land.

Examples: Mississippi River Delta (North America), Nile Delta (Africa)

Formation timescale: Medium (thousands of years)

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Astronaut photograph of the Bonneville Salt Flats in northeast Utah.
Salt Flat Deposition

How Salt Flats Develop

Salt flats form when water collecting in a closed desert basin evaporates repeatedly, leaving behind thick layers of crystallized mineral salts.

Examples: Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia), Bonneville Salt Flats (Utah, USA)

Formation timescale: Medium (thousands of years)

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A mangrove forest wetland.
Wetland Deposition

How Wetlands Form

A wetland forms wherever land is saturated with water for long enough that it develops distinct waterlogged soils and water-adapted vegetation, whether beside a river, along a coast, or in a shallow basin.

Examples: Pantanal (South America), Everglades (North America)

Formation timescale: Medium (thousands of years)

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A dirt road winding through ponds and prairie grassland of the Northern Great Plains.
Plain Deposition

Plains and the Processes That Create Them

Plains are large areas of relatively flat, low-lying land, built up by long-term sediment deposition, worn down from older uplands, or formed from layered lava flows.

Examples: Great Plains (North America), North European Plain (Europe)

Formation timescale: Long (hundreds of thousands of years)

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