Professional Interests

  • Depositional mechanisms of subaqueous sediment gravity flows (turbidity currents, debris flows) as deduced from sedimentary structures, grain fabric, texture, deposit geometry.
  • Submarine fan and slope deposition, including the problem of identification and interpretation of cyclicity.
  • Sedimentary evolution of modern and ancient continental margins (facies, stratigraphy, sandstone petrography). Ancient examples are drawn from the Canadian Appalachians (GaspĂ© Peninsula, western Newfoundland, Avalon Zone), the Canadian Cordilliera (Nanaimo Basin), and Upper Jurassic - Lower Cretaceous strata beneath the Grand Banks and on land in Portugal and northern Spain. Recent projects include:
    • Shelf, deltaic and slope sedimentation in the Marmara Sea and southwestern Black Sea, Turkey, and implications for a proposed "biblical" flood in that area,
    • Albian turbidites and provenance in the deep-water Newfoundland Basin east of the Grand Banks (ODP Leg 210),
    • Seismic stratigraphy of the Tertiary succession in Orphan Basin, Newfoundland offshore
    • Sediment fluxes from the Anatolian Plateau as a Canadian component of the TopoEurope investigation of orogenic plateaux genesis.

Recent Funding Sources:

  • Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
  • Canadian Foundation for Innovation