Nijmegen The Netherlands on a hill at the terminus of glaciation
The geology of Nijmegen is that of a moraine at the southern extent of Pleistocene glaciers. It sits at the foot and at the northwest end of a set of hills that were shoved here as a part of the furthest reach of that epoch's ice flow.
The dirt, gravel, and rocks that had been loosened by various geological forces were transported southward during the millions of years of intermitent glacial periods, pushed by immense deep layers of ice flowing under the force of thicker ice further north, and this is where the cold was no longer sufficient to support further movement.
This terminal moraine (stuwwal [push-wall] in Dutch) is also a southern boundary for the "great rivers," the distributaries of the Rhine (Rijn,) which first splits just a bicycle-ride upstream from the city, and goes delta after passing through a 20-kilometer-wide opening in the greater Dutch Pleistocene morraine.
