Sedimentary Environments
Any area where sediment is capable of accumulating is considered a depositional environment. Each depositional environment posseses distinctive physical, chemical, and biological characteristics that allow for specific kinds of deposits. In this section we will look at how the properties of individual environments, found in continental, transitional, and marine settings, influence deposition and how this information is used to infer paleoenvironments.
Continental enviroments refers to all depostion that occurs on land; this includes fluvial systems (rivers and streams), lakes, deserts and areas adjacent to or covered by glaciers. At first glance it may seem impossible to be able to determine exactly which environment produced a given sediment but the factors that allow deposition behave extremely different in each environment.