The Jackson School is home to one of the largest and most diverse sedimentology & stratigraphy faculties in the nation. When U.S. News & World Report last ranked sedimentology & stratigraphy graduate programs, the University’s program was ranked first in the nation.

Today the Jackson School’s graduate program in geology, which includes sedimentology and stratigraphy, is ranked fifth in the nation. The program has a long tradition of excellence. It is the birthplace of depositional systems analysis, a fundamental approach for relating the spatial distribution of sedimentary rocks to their environments of deposition and a school of thought that has been widely influential in both academia and industry.

Major advances in the petrology and diagenesis of sedimentary rocks can also be tied to the program. Marine geology and geophysics has become an equally strong component, through affiliation with the Institute for Geophysics.  The program was among the first to use multichannel seismic reflection techniques to understand the geologic history of continental margins around the world, and has pioneered the academic use of 3D seismic imaging for a variety of applications, from basin history and evolution to reservoir assessment. The program is currently focused in the areas of global change, geochemistry and diagenesis, sequence stratigraphy, seismic stratigraphy, surficial processes and sedimentary process modeling, and pore-scale to full field reservoir characterization.

The sedimentology/stratigraphy research community at JSG includes 24 Ph.D. faculty, research scientists, and senior research scientists spread across the Department of Geological Sciences (DGS), Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), and the Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). This group forms the core of the sedimentology/stratigraphy curricular group, providing as wide a range of areas of research specialization as found in any similar program in the nation.

The Department of Geological Sciences group has core areas in seismic and sequence stratigraphic analysis of both clastic and carbonate systems, diagenesis and geochemistry of carbonates and clastics including extensive stable and radiogenic isotope labs, physical and numerical modeling of eolian, fluvial, and shallow to deep marine transport systems with an emphasis on the construction of sedimentary deposits, petrology, basin analysis, and the application of field, petrologic, chemical, and isotopic methods for studying chemical evolution of groundwater and ancient oceans.

The Institute for Geophysics is focused on large multidisciplinary research programs looking at 2D and 3D geophysical studies of stratigraphic evolution of marine and lacustrine basins worldwide. The sedimentology/stratigraphy group at UTIG makes use of a wide range of geophysics tools and datasets to attack problems of global geodynamics and climate change.

The Bureau of Economic Geology has research efforts in clastic and carbonate sequence stratigraphy, quantitative seismic geomorphologic analysis of marine systems, mudrock systems, clastic and carbonate diagenesis, clastic and carbonate reservoir characterization, and basin analysis. Studies are practically focused but extend to questions concerning the fundamental processes that act to control rock properties in the subsurface.

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• Genetic stratigraphy and depositional sequences of Gulf of Mexico Basin, Caribbean area, North Sea, South America, and Australian basins: reconstruction of depositional environments and processes from surface and subsurface data.
• Integration of geological and geophysical data to define and delineate depositional sequences and their component facies elements.
• Investigation of carbonate diagenesis, groundwater and soil evolution, and cave deposits in Texas and the Caribbean.
• Seismic stratigraphy, structure, and hydrocarbon potential of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico basins using a combination of data collected by academic surveys and data collected by the oil industry
• Environments, facies, and processes of modern and ancient fluvial, eolian and submarine depositional systems.
• Diagenesis of carbonates, chert, sandstone, and shale: microscopic, chemical, isotopic, and experimental studies used to interpret changes in mineralogy, texture, and porosity after deposition.
• Reconstruction of ancient seawater chemistry.
• Deep Marine Depositional Margin evolution and architecture of mobile shale basins (Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Indonesia); Clastic sequence stratigraphy of tectonically active and passive margins; quantitative seismic geomorphology of fluvial, nearshore and deep marine depositional systems. Outcrop sequence stratigraphy and architecture of fluvial and tidally influence deltaic sand bodies.
• Seismic stratigraphy of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico basins using a combination of data collected by academic surveys and data collected by the oil industry.
• Dynamics of grain transport and bedform mechanics: application of fluid mechanics to the interpretation of sedimentary structures.
• Dune fields as self-organizing complex systems.
• Sulfide deposits in salt-dome cap rocks: mineralization, metalliferous formation waters, and hydrocarbon accumulations in the Gulf Coast.
• Predictive linkages between shallow and deepwate systems.
• Relationships between sea-level change and tidal signals
• Fluvio-lacustrine sequence stratigraphy
• Geohistory of glaciated continental margins through examination of glacially dominated sequence stratigraphy on continental shelves and in fjords.
• Modeling and observationally-based approaches to the study of submarine channel formation and evolution.
• Using sedimentary and stratigraphic products of orogens to study tectonic-climate interplay.

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Few programs in the country have an array of analytical instruments as comprehensive as that in the Jackson School. All facilities and equipment are available for student research. For example, the School operates two ground-based and one airborne LIDAR system. These laser systems generate high resolution topography maps of Earth’s surface used for 3D mapping and modeling.

Available equipment also includes: wind tunnels, water flumes, two scanning electron microscopes, two ICP mass spectrometers, an optical emission inductively coupled plasma spectrometer, an environmental SEM, a recently purchased electron microprobe, a fluorescence microscope, a microscope-based cold cathode cathodoluminescence system, a high-resolution 3D light microscope, an automated SEM-CL system, and an X-ray diffractometer.

There are also dedicated laboratories for: clean room preparation of samples for isotopic analysis, light microscopy, paleomagnetic analysis, microfossil preparation, and physical modeling. The School has an exceptionally broad suite of software tools for image analysis, seismic and subsurface interpretation, and 3D modeling.

The Bureau of Economic Geology, part of the University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School, maintains a sample repository including cores from more than 30,000 wells and cuttings from about 70,000 wells.

• More about Jackson School facilities

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To further its top ranking in the areas of sedimentology and stratigraphy among U.S. universities, the Jackson School has added five new faculty in the past three years in the areas of sedimentation and basin evolution, clastic and carbonate sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy, process modeling of clastic systems, and isotope geochemistry and paleoclimatology.

When combined with the already strong group at the Department of Geosciences and the applied and academic research efforts at the Bureau of Economic Geology and Institute for Geophysics, the Jackson School “soft rock” community has established a critical mass of geoscientists that together are tackling some of the most challenging issues in sedimentary geology.

The proximity of the Jackson School to the large petroleum geoscience community in Houston in general further augments the stature of the Jackson School. Numerous cooperative research and research funding opportunities exist for motivated students.

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Researchers and students in this program area routinely work in the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, the Caribbean, the North Sea, South America, Australia, Texas, Trinidad, Tobago, Venezuela, and Indonesia.

Research opportunities are greatly expanded due to two affiliated institutions: the Institute for Geophysics and the Bureau of Economic Geology, the latter of which functions as both the State Geological Survey and as the largest Research Unit within the University.

The Bureau of Economic Geology runs several Industrial Associates consortia including the Reservoir Characterization Research Laboratory (carbonate reservoir stratigraphic, petrophysical, and engineering research), Deep Shelf Gas Consortium, and the Quantitative Clastics Laboratory, which offer numerous research opportunities for graduate students.

The Institute for Geophysics is a major recipient of NSF funding for work throughout the world’s oceans and lacustrine basins and also have graduate student research as a key element of several programs.

• More about graduate admissions & support

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