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Liquid Water
Water can erode rocks and soil by crashing into them or flowing over them and carrying them to a new place. Flowing water, such as rivers and streams, can carry dirt and small rocks very long distances, often forming a delta at the mouth of a river or depositing sediment in sandbars or floodplains. Water washing over rocks in waves, currents and tides can also transport tiny particles of dirt and stone, leading to coastal erosion.
Ice
Frozen water can form glaciers, huge bodies of ice that slowly flow over the surface of the ground. Glaciers melt and refreeze, picking up the soil and stones beneath them and transporting them to new places. This also causes the glacier to have an abrasive bottom that can grind and score the surface beneath the glacier. When glaciers begin to melt, their edges retreat and leave behind glacial deposits called tills, drumlins and moraines. The melting water may also carry sediment away to form meltwater deposits.
Wind
Wind can erode surfaces through two major processes. When wind lifts loose particles of soil or stone and carries them away, it is called deflation. The particles carried by wind can also scour soil and stone fragments off a surface in a process called abrasion. When wind speeds drop, these particles fall out of the air to form deposits. Such deposits formed out of sand are called sand dunes, while finer silt particles form a fertile soil called loess.
Gravity
The force of gravity also transports soil and rock over time, usually in combination with other agents of erosion. Stones loosened by growing plant roots or thawing ice may tumble downhill in a rockfall. Landslides occur when a large mass of earth and stones slides suddenly down a slope. A much slower downhill movement is called creep. As a gradual shift of earth, it causes less obvious damage than a landslide but can slowly tip over walls and telephone poles.