GL3521: SEDIMENTOLOGY (2020-2021)

The course will take a problem-led approach emphasising concepts and techniques in preference to exhaustive knowledge. By the end of this course, students should be able to: 

• describe sedimentary successions in an objective, non-interpretative way, identifying the features of physical, chemical and biological origin, and assemble the descriptions into a sedimentary log;

• deduce, from sedimentary logs, the processes leading to deposition and preservation of sediment, and understand the uncertainties in this analysis;

• describe the dominant processes, lithological characteristics, and spatial architecture of the terrestrial and marine depositional environments that dominate the sedimentary rock record;

• describe in general terms how the inherent characteristics of these environments as well as externally applied factors affects the preservation potential, temporal evolution, and three-dimensional architecture of sedimentary successions;

• interpret from sedimentary records the environments of deposition that were operating, identifying all reasonable alternative explanations, and extract information that  might indicate past climatic conditions;
  
• make regional predictions of the lateral extent, geometry and lithological characteristics of a sedimentary successions from limited sets of sedimentary logs, and integrate such analysis with other key sources of information such as seismic surveys, faunal and floral analyses, age-dating, petrographic and provenance studies.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

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There are no assessments for this course.