Physical processes of sedimentation / Физические процессы при седиментации

Nearly everyone, at some time in his or her life, will have stood on a  sea beach and watched how the waves repeatedly disturb and then deposit the sand grains, whilst the wind, blowing freely over the drier parts of the beach, gathers up some of the sand and sweeps it inland to form tall dunes.

This particular case, one from common experience, serves very well to introduce the general topic of this book, namely, the dynamic interactions, in natural surroundings, between detrital particles and moving fluids. These interactions, in which physical processes are of paramount importance, give us the depositional landscapes and seascapes with which we are familiar today and, at various removes in time, many of the sedimentary strata found in the earth's crust <...>