Welcome

Connecting Earth’s Surface to its History with Physics

Welcome to the homepage for the UCR Sedimentology Research group. ~4.5 billion years have passed since the Earth formed. Over that time, Earth’s surface has undergone tremendous changes. The surface environment humans are familiar with is rapidly changing, and Earth’s past holds essential lessons to better understand the effects of global warming. Over the long time multi-cellular life on earth has existed (about the last 500-600 million years), our only window to understand how climate change affects the environment is to forensically examine evidence left behind in sedimentary rocks.

Our group studies the physics of how wind, water, and ice move sediment on the Earth’s surface to create landscapes and how that sediment accumulates to make archives of Earth’s environment through time.

Our research tools span a wide range. We use satellites and aircraft to monitor how the Earth is changing today. We study rock strata to reconstruct environments in Earth’s deep past. We develop theories to explain how Earth’s surface changes over short and long time periods. We test our theories with laboratory experiments.