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The term "nivation" is used to describe those geomorphologic processes that, because of the permanent presence or longer duration of snow, come into existence in some place and they may be appealed in order to justify the special manner of formation of some landforms. At the east slope of Sabalan, because of its geographical direction, the greatness of height, direction of the prevalent wind, and yearly and daily temperature fluctuation, snow has acted as a geomorphic factor and it plays a basic and primary role in creating and developing most forms and phenomenon of geomorphology. Considering the importance of such changes in the said area and in order to account to numerous questions about the causes and the special manner of formation of some shapes and occurrences of some phenomenon at the slope surfaces, in the present article it has been attempted to study about the nivation processes, forms related with nivation, and generally the role of nival processes in changing the appearance of Sabalan east slope.
Keywords: Nivation, Regolith, Weathering pits, Snow patches, Thermocirque, Talus cone.