Scientists at the Sedimentary Systems Lab study how sediment movement, fluid flow, and bed topography interact to create depositional environments, such as rivers, deltas, and coastlines. They are fundamentally interested in the physical interaction of these processes and how they create the depositional environment. The lab focuses on depositional environments because they are hotspots of human habitation and recorders of earth history. Predicting their evolution into the future is essential as Earth's climate is changing—and understanding how their deposits accumulate is necessary for reading the stratigraphic record.