W. John Schmelz

About me

I am currently a postdoc within the Stratigraphy and Earth History lab group at the Rutgers University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. I am generally fascinated by shallow marine sedimentary processes and the depositional architectures they create, and the implications of these records for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. My research has focused on the spatial and temporal transitions between fluvial, estuarine, deltaic, and marine paleoenvironments through the climatic fluctuations of the mid-Cretaceous to assess the potential to store supercritical CO2 in porous sandstones capped by impermeable shales offshore southern New Jersey and Maryland. I have made primary interpretations through an integrated sequence stratigraphic analysis and am numerically modelling the stratigraphy to extricate the implied, interconnected tectonostratigraphic history of the Baltimore Canyon Trough and global mean sea level record. I earned a B.A. in Environmental Science from Connecticut College and my recent experience includes contributing to research projects examining geomorphological change within coastal National Parks.