An alluvial fan is a fan- or cone-shaped deposit of sediment crossed and built up by streams or debris flows. These flows come from a single point source at the apex of the fan, and over time move to occupy many positions on the fan surface. Fans are typically found where a canyon draining from mountainous terrain emerges out onto a flatter plain, and especially along fault-bounded mountain fronts.
A convergence of neighboring alluvial fans into a single apron of deposits against a slope is called a bajada, or compound alluvial fan.
Read more about Alluvial Fan: Formation, In Arid Climates, In Humid Climates, Flood Hazards, Gallery
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“Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)