Plains Come in Many Varieties
A collection of pictures arranged in
categories
Definition
• A plain is an extensive area of level or rolling
treeless country . It may be described as a
broad unbroken expanse
• Prairies and steppes are types of plains, and
the archetype for a plain is often thought of
as a grassland, but plains in their natural
state may also be covered in shrublands,
woodland and forest, or vegetation may be
absent in the case of sandy or stony plains in
hot deserts.
Categories of Plains
• Coastal plain, an area of low-lying land adjacent
to a sea; the term is used especially where they
contrast with hills, mountains or plateaus
further inland.
• Interior plain, A large area of level or rolling
land in the interior of a continent, often inland
from the coastal plain and at a higher elevation
than the coastal plain. It may be between
mountains or plateaus or areas of hills.
• Lacustrine plain, a plain that originally formed
in a lacustrine environment, that is, as the bed
of a lake.
• Lava plain, formed by sheets of flowing lava.
Fluvial plains are formed by rivers, and
may be one of these overlapping types:
• Flood plain, adjacent to a stream, river, lake or
wetland that experiences occasional or periodic
flooding.
• Alluvial plain, formed over a long period of time by a
river depositing sediment on its floodplain or bed
which becomes alluvial soil. The difference between
a floodplain and an alluvial plain is that the
floodplain represents the area experiencing flooding
fairly regularly in the present or recently, whereas an
alluvial plain includes areas where the floodplain is
now and used to be, or areas which only experience
flooding a few times a century.
• Scroll plain, a plain through which a river meanders
with a very low gradient.
Glacial plains are formed by the
movement of glaciers under the force of
gravity:
• Till plain, a plain of glacial till that forms when a
sheet of ice becomes detached from the main
body of a glacier and melts in place depositing
the sediments it carries. Till plains are composed
of unsorted material (till) of all sizes.
• Sandur (plural sandar), a glacial outwash plain
formed of sediments deposited by meltwater at
the terminus of a glacier. Sandar consist mainly
of stratified (layered and sorted) gravel and
sand.
Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain
Coastal Plain, Albania
Coastal Plain, Australia
Gulf Coastal Plain, U.S.A.
Interior
Plains
Canadian Great Plains
Southern Manitoba, Canada – interior
glacial till plain
Interior Plains – Kansas
Lacustrine Plain
Uyrni Salt Flat (remnant lake), Bolivia –
a lacustrine formation
Uyrni Salt Flat
Lava Plain
Lava Plain - Jan Mayen Island, Arctic Ocean
Hawaii Lava
Plains
Lava Plain, Hawaii
Where People Live in Floodplain Areas
Floodplain
Flooded Floodplain
Mississippi Floodplain
Flooding on the
Mississippi
Floodplain
That’s why it’s
called a
floodplain!
Mississippi River Alluvial Plain
Alluvial plain, Franz Joseph, New Zealand
West Virginia Alluvial Plain
Farming the
alluvial plain of
the Huang He,
China
Scroll Plain, New Zealand
Lower Mississippi
Valley scroll plain
– map shows
many shifts in the
stream’s course.
Till Plain, Northwest Territories, Canada
Till Plain, Nunavut, Canada
Aerial view
of the
Central Till
Plain in
Putnam
County,
Indiana
Braided Outwash Plain, Alaska
Outwash Plain, Alaska
Sandur in Switzerland