Book excerpt: Deepwater Sedimentary Systems: Science, Discovery and Applications helps readers identify, understand and interpret deepwater sedimentary systems at various scales – both onshore and offshore. This book describes the best practices in the integration of geology, geophysics, engineering, technology and economics used to inform smart business decisions in these diverse environments. It draws on technical results gained from deepwater exploration and production drilling campaigns and global field analog studies. With the multi-decadal resilience of deepwater exploration and production and the nature of its inherent uncertainty, this book serves as the essential reference for companies, consultancies, universities, governments and deepwater practitioners around the world seeking to understand deepwater systems and how to explore for and produce resources in these frontier environments. From an academic perspective, readers will use this book as the primer for understanding the processes, deposits and sedimentary environments in deep water – from deep oceans to deep lakes. This book provides conceptual approaches and state-of-the-art information on deepwater systems, as well as scenarios for the next 100 years of human-led exploration and development in deepwater, offshore environments. The students taught this material in today's classrooms will become the leaders of tomorrow in Earth's deepwater frontier. This book provides a broad foundation in deepwater sedimentary systems. What may take an individual dozens of academic and professional courses to achieve an understanding in these systems is provided here in one book. - Presents a holistic view of how subsurface and engineering processes work together in the energy industry, bringing together contributions from the various technical and engineering disciplines - Provides diverse perspectives from a global authorship to create an accurate picture of the process of deepwater exploration and production around the world - Helps readers understand how to interpret deepwater systems at various scales to inform smart business decisions, with a significant portion of the workflows derived from the upstream energy industry