Department Sedimentary Systems & Resources

The Sedimentary Systems and Resources Research Group studies the various processes by which castic rocks are formed on the Earth’s surface through erosion, transport and deposition. The group focuses on the transition zone between land and sea, where rivers, waves, tides and other depositional mechanisms interact. For this taks, billions of years old deposits from the Archean of South Africa are just as interesting as the Holocene of the Wadden Sea or the distribution of the new sediment such as plastic along the coast. Our methods include sedimentological logging, facies analysis and drone imaging in the field, petrography and geochemistry in the laboratory, and data analysis with digital outcrop models and Artificial Intelligence. In addition, trace and body fossils also help us to have an insight into the environment of the past.