and acknowledgments Self-organized criticality is a new way of viewing nature. The basic picture is one where nature is perpetually out of balance, but organized in a poised state-the critical state-where anything can happen within well-defined statistical laws. The aim of the science of self-organized criticality is to yield insight into the fundamental question of why nature is complex, not simple, as the laws of physics imply. Self-organized criticality explains some ubiquitous patterns...

"Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." Isaac Newton's The System of the World is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest minds in history—a monumental exploration of gravity, motion, and the structure of the cosmos that forever changed the way humanity understands the universe. Originally written as the third volume of his Principia Mathematica, The System of the World distills Newton's revolutionary ideas into clear, e...

This book is intended for the GIS Science and Decision Science communities. It is primarily targeted at postgraduate students and practitioners in GIS and urban, regional and environmental planning as well as applied decision analysis. It is also suitable for those studying and working with spatial decision support systems. The main objectives of this book are to effectivley integrate Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) into Geographic Information Science (GIScience), to provide a compr...

This book contains the most recent progress in data assimilation in meteorology, oceanography and hydrology including land surface. It spans both theoretical and applicative aspects with various methodologies such as variational, Kalman filter, ensemble, Monte Carlo and artificial intelligence methods. Besides data assimilation, other important topics are also covered including targeting observation, sensitivity analysis, and parameter estimation. The book will be useful to individual rese...

The present book provides guidance to understanding complicated coupled processes based on the experimental data available and implementation of developed algorithms in numerical codes. Results of selected test cases in the fields of closed-form solutions (e.g., deformation processes), single processes (such as groundwater flow) as well as coupled processes are presented.It is part of the OpenGeoSys initiative - an open source project to share knowledge and experience in environmen...

High-Resolution NMR Techniques in Organic Chemistry describes the most important high-resolution NMR techniques that find use in the structure elucidation of organic molecules and the investigation of their behavior in solution. The techniques are presented and explained using pictorial formats wherever possible, limiting the number of mathematical descriptions. The emphasis is on the more recently developed methods of solution-state NMR spectroscopy with a considerable amount of informati...

This is the first book to revisit geotechnical site characterization from a probabilistic point of view and provide rational tools to probabilistically characterize geotechnical properties and underground stratigraphy using limited information obtained from a specific site. This book not only provides new probabilistic approaches for geotechnical site characterization and slope stability analysis, but also tackles the difficulties in practical implementation of these approaches. In additio...

The author introduces the reader to the creation and implementation of space-related models by applying a learning-by-doing and problem-oriented approach. The required procedural skills are rarely taught at universities and many scientists and engineers struggle to transfer a model into a computer program. The purpose of this book is to fill this gap. It moves from simple to more complex applications, covering various important topics in the sequence: dynamic matrix processing, 2D and 3D g...

The Earth's average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, and computer models project that it will rise much more over the next hundred years, with significant impacts on weather, climate, and human society. Many climate scientists attribute these increases to the build up of greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels and to the anthropogenic production of short-lived climate pollutants. Climate Change Modeling Methodologies: Selected Entries from the Encyclop...

This tutorial provides the application of the coupling interface OGS#IPhreeqc (open-source scientific software) to model reactive mass transport processes in environmental subsurface systems. It contains general information regarding reactive transport modeling and step-by-step model set-up with OGS#IPhreeqc and related components such as GINA and ParaView. Benchmark examples (1D to 2D) are presented in detail. The book is intended primarily for graduate students and applied scientists who...

This text book provides the theoretical background of rock fracture mechanics and displacement discontinuity methods used for the modelling of geomechanical problems. The computer program FRACOD is used to analyse the fracture problems, assessing fracture initiation and propagation in tension (Mode I), shear (Mode II) and mixed mode I and II of solid intact or jointed geomaterials. The book also presents the fundamentals of thermo-mechanical coupling and hydro-mechanical coupling. Formulat...

Computerized modeling is a powerful tool to describe the complex interrelations between measured data and the dynamics of sedimentary systems. Complex interaction of environmental factors with natural variations and increasing anthropogenic intervention is reflected in the sedimentary record at varying scales. The understanding of these processes gives way to the reconstruction of the past and is a key to the prediction of future trends. Especially in cases where observations are limited a...