One of the two schools of sequence stratigraphy, proposed in 1989 by W. E. Galloway (‘Genetic stratigraphic sequences in basin analysis. 1: Architecture and genesis of flooding-surface bounded depositional deposits’, Bull. Am. Ass. Petrol. Geol., 73, 125–42), based on studies of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It uses marine flooding surfaces as the boundaries of strata, because these reorganize the sedimentary system and are easy to identify and correlate. Compare depositional sequence model.