Urstromtal

On the southern margin the plateau falls to a sandy outwash plain which merges into the zone of urstromtäler.

This high urstromtal is drained in part by the Notec and Warta rivers; it varies greatly in width with basin-shaped widenings and narrow stretches between, but can be traced for an east-west distance of some 400 miles from the Vistula to the Elbe.

Certain deposits occur in the central areas of Poland, within the urstromtal of the river Vistula (Ochle deposit near Konin) and the urstromtal of the Notec river.

Thus the Ottomans moved to the Sea of Marmara, the Castilians down the westward flowing rivers from the Meseta to the Atlantic, the Austrians into the Pannonian basin and the Prussians eastwards along the urstromtal to the Oder.

The valley of the lower Elbe was thought to have originated during the Weichsel glacial when it formed the urstromtal segment that drained the runoff from the ice margin in the north, and also the eastern urstromtäler of the Weichsel glacial, towards the North Sea.

Characteristic landforms include: morainic uplands, sandar plains, subglacial valleys, east-to-west running sets of end moraine ridges (in Jutland the direction is changing to north-south) and urstromtals (ice-marginal valleys), which transported meltwaters along the ice sheet front in the general inclination of the area—towards WNW.