Most sedimentary deposits are the result of transport of material as particles. Movement
of detritus may be purely due to gravity but more commonly it is the result of flow in water,
air, ice or dense mixtures of sediment and water. The interaction of the sedimentary
material with the transporting media results in the formation of bedforms, which may be
preserved as sedimentary structures in rocks and hence provide a record of the processes
occurring at the time of deposition. If the physical processes occurring in different modern
environments are known and if the sedimentary rocks are interpreted in terms of those
same processes it is possible to infer the probable environment of deposition. Understanding
these processes and their products is therefore fundamental to sedimentology.
In this chapter the main physical processes occurring in depositional environments are
discussed. The nature of the deposits resulting from these processes and the main
sedimentary structures formed by the interaction of the flow medium and the detritus
are introduced. Many of these features occur in a number of different sedimentary environments
and should be considered in the context of the environments in which they occur.