Research Areas: Sedimentology and Stratigraphy

1. Aqueous Geochemistry
2. Environmental and Theoretical Geochemistry
3. Mineral Physics and Petrology
4. Paleoecology
5. Paleoclimatology and Paleoceanography
6. Planetary Science    
7. Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
8. Seismology
9. Space Geodesy
10. Tectonics and Structural Geology                                                                                            

Sedimentological and physical stratigraphic approaches are being applied to problems of tectonics, paleoceanography, and depositional systems.

Brad Sageman is using high-resolution event stratigraphic data to test and refine sequence stratigraphic concepts and models. His research, based on detailed sampling of mid-Cretaceous rocks from the Western Interior Basin of North America, uses biostratigraphy, event stratigraphy, paleoecology and elemental geochemistry to obtain an integrated dataset allowing recognition and basin-wide correlation of relative shallowing/deepening trends, condensed intervals, and regional disconformities, critical for field-testing sequence stratigraphic paradigms.

On the theoretical side, Emile Okal is studying the influence of poorly consolidated sediments on the generation and propagation of low-frequency acoustic energy from a variety of sources in the marine environment, with the goal of obtaining constraints on the sources of seismic noise in remote oceanic areas: these can include landslides, small earthquakes and unsuspected volcanic seamounts.

Abraham Lerman studies the issues of global erosion and deposition rates of clastic and biogeochemical sediments, with reference to the rates of continental erosion that have been changing through geologic time. Theoretical aspects of this work are studies of the settling rates of sediment particles of different shape and radiogenic argon escape from clayey sediments undergoing diagenesis.