Sedimentary Systems Lab Research

We study how sediment movement, fluid flow, and bed topography interact to create depositional environments, such as rivers, deltas, and coastlines.  We are fundamentally interested in the physical interaction of these processes and how they create the depositional environment.

 

We focus on depositional environments because they are hotspots of human habitation and recorders of earth history. Predicting their evolution into the future is essential as climate is changing, and understanding how their deposits accumulate is necessary for reading the stratigraphic record.

 

 

OUR APPROACH

1

THEORY

We use and develop numerical models to understand how processes work in a simplified context. From this we can extract hypotheses that are tested with field data.

2

APPLICATION TO MODERN SYSTEMS

We test hypotheses generated from theory on modern systems using remote sensing, GIS, and field data collection methods to better understand how depositional environments work.

3

READING THE STRATIGRAPHIC RECORD

The stratigraphic record gives us a fuzzy but characteristic view of depositional environments. We use our understanding of depositional environments derived from theory and modern systems to extract useful quantitative data from ancient systems.

 

 

CURRENT FUNDED RESEARCH