Observation

The question was not so popular among the candidates and the performance of the candidates who answered the question was average.  Some of the candidates who answered the question could not correctly define a delta as a fan/triangle shaped alluvial plain formed from river deposition at the mouth of a river.  The characteristics of delta are:
- fan/triangle shaped
- found at the lower course of a river
- a feature of river deposition
- it is low lying
- occurs in swampy areas
- composed of alluvial deposits such as mud, silt or gravel
- has rich fertile soil
- usually forested
- continues to grow seawards
- sediments are arranged according to sizes
-surface is generally flat
- has distributaries
- some distributaries have levees
- shoreline of delta may have spits, bars and lagoons
- may take different shapes e.g. bird foot, arcuate, estuarine and inverted cone
- differ in sizes
- differ in growth rate
- examples include deltas of rivers Niger, Nile, Henkong, Hwang Ho, Mississippi, Volta, etc

            Conditions that influence delta formation are:
- reduced velocity of river towards the mouth
- low tidal currents/waves
- mouth of the river sheltered from strong waves/currents
- shallow continental shelf
- absence of lakes along river course
-river should have a long profile
- river should be big enough to transport large volumes of sediments
-active lateral and vertical erosion at upper course of river