What do you do?
I map out and sample mountainside exposures of limestones to decipher the history and geometry of sediment accumulation. Limestones are typically deposited in warm tropical waters along coastlines where marine organisms proliferate, building reefs like the modern Great Barrier Reef or large oceanic platforms like the modern Bahamas. I use the sedimentologic and geochemical information contained in the limestones to track the rise and fall of sea level and to reconstruct ancient environmental conditions in the surrounding oceans.

Why should the general public be interested in what you do?
Limestones are the primary rock records of ancient oceans and atmospheres. As such, they track changes in the composition of the global environment through time and provide a long-term predictive tool for environmental changes occurring in today's world. Limestones and associated rocks are also one of the primary reservoirs for much of the world's oil and gas reserves (e.g., the vast reserves of the Middle East are limestones).

Why does it interest you?
Study of limestones permits me to visit beautiful field areas where they are exposed in mountain belts, such as the Great Basin, Southern Canadian Rockies and Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico. Plus I get to occasionally visit areas of modern limestone deposition such as the Bahamas, Baja and south Florida.

What major advances/discoveries have occurred in your research field over the last 10 years?
We have developed a conceptual framework for limestone accumulation that combines our understanding of depositional environments with potentially global changes in sea level (termed "sequence stratigraphy") that strongly enhances the predictability of the architecture of limestone bodies and thus exploration strategies for oil and gas.