Welcome

Connecting Earth’s Surface to its History

Welcome to the homepage for the UCR Sedimentology Research group.

The environment and climate we are familiar with is rapidly changing, and Earth’s past holds essential lessons to better understand how global warming, intensifying storms, and rising seas will impact society. Over the billions of years that life on Earth has existed, sedimentary rocks are our best windows into the past.

Our group studies the physics of how wind, water, and ice move sediment on the Earth’s surface to create landscapes. We then study 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 and field research 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.