Woldstedt (1955: 159) spoke about underlying sands that, in the "Cloppenburg-Bassum Geest", belonged to the Elster glaciation.

A covering of boulder clay was deposited over the outwash sands during the Saale glaciation, or more precisely the Drenthe stage.

A series of meltwater valleys characterises the surface of the Cloppenburg Geest, something that was vital to the emergence of the river network.

Hausfeld (1983; 1984) put their emergence down to large cracks in the Drenthe ice sheet, through which meltwaters flowed as the glacier thawed, cutting through the ground moraines and down into the outwash sands.

During the marine regression of the Weichselian glaciation that ended about 12,000 years ago, in which the northwest German plain was not covered by ice, the rivers of the Cloppenburg Geest cut deeply into the valley sands.