urstromtal

• Urstromtal

Borrowed from German Urstromtal, from ur- (“primeval”) + Strom (“stream”) + Tal (“valley”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈʊə(ɹ)stɹəʊmˌtɑːl/

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urstromtal (plural urstromtäler or urstromtals)

1. A broad glacial valley formed during an ice age by meltwater flowing roughly parallel to the ice margin.
   • 1950, Margaret Reid Shackleton, Europe: A Regional Geography, page 263:

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

   • 1959, Sedimentation, page 49:

     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.

   • 1968, Report of the Twenty-third Session, Czechoslovakia, page 124:

     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.

   • 1989, Frank Ahnert, Landforms and Landform Evolution in West Germany, page 89:

     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, ...

   • 2014, Geoffrey Parker, The Geopolitics of Domination, →ISBN:

     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.