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From June 12-16, 2006 over eighty scientists from around the world gathered in
Rhodes, Greece to attend the conference “20 Years of Nonlinear Dynamics in
Geosciences”. The editors of this book organized the conference. It was sponsored
by Aegean Conferences and was endorsed by the American Meteorological Society
and the European Geosciences Union.
In the past two decades many symposia and sessions in major general assemblies
have focused on nonlinear dynamics. However, most of these meetings were specialized
and dedicated to specific topics. The aim of this conference was to bring scientists
from diverse fields in Geosciences together, to discuss how nonlinear approaches
to specific problems are applied, and what major advances have been
achieved.
This book is a series of talks presented at the conference. According to the design
of the conference there were no parallel sessions and the presentation of the
talks had no particular order. The idea was for everybody to be exposed to everybody
else's scientific problems and to allow everyone to see how different disciplines
approach common themes. This philosophy was applied in the organization of this
book as well. The papers have no particular order.
The question we had to frequently answer was why this conference title?. We
were fortunate to have the founder of chaos theory answer it for us in his letter
addressing the participants. We could not have explained it better. Edward N. Lorenz’s
letter follows.
Nonlinear Dynamics in Geosciences is comprised of the proceedings of "20 Years of Nonlinear Dynamics in Geosciences", held June 11-16, 2006 in Rhodes, Greece as part of the Aegean Conferences. The volume brings together the most up-to-date research from the atmospheric sciences, hydrology, geology, and other areas of geosciences, and discusses the advances made in the last two decades and the future directions of nonlinear dynamics. Topics covered include predictability, ensemble prediction, nonlinear prediction, nonlinear time series analysis, low-dimensional chaos, nonlinear modeling, fractals and multifractals, bifurcation, complex networks, self-organized criticality, extreme events, and other aspects of nonlinear science. |
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