Self-Organized Criticality in Earth Systems

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-IX

   PDF

2. Fractals and Fractal Distributions

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 1-24

3. Recognizing Power-Law Distributions

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 25-40

4. Self-Affine Time Series

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 41-66

5. Deterministic Chaos

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 67-86

6. Self-Organized Criticality

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 87-108

7. The Forest-Fire Model — Tuning and Universality

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 109-124

8. Earthquakes and Stick-Slip Motion

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 125-162

9. Landslides

   • Stefan Hergarten

   Pages 163-188

10. Drainage Networks

    • Stefan Hergarten

    Pages 189-234

11. SOC and Nothing Else?

    • Stefan Hergarten

    Pages 235-252

12. Where do we Stand?

    • Stefan Hergarten

    Pages 253-254

13. Back Matter

    Pages 255-273

    PDF

Self-organized criticality (SOC) has become a magic word in various scientific disciplines; it provides a framework for understanding complexity and scale invariance in systems showing irregular fluctuations. In the first 10 years after Per Bak and his co-workers presented their seminal idea, more than 2000 papers on this topic appeared. Seismology has been a field in earth sciences where the SOC concept has already deepened the understanding, but there seem to be much more examples in earth sciences where applying the SOC concept may be fruitful. After introducing the reader into the basics of fractals, chaos and SOC, the book presents established and new applications of SOC in earth sciences, namely earthquakes, forest fires, landslides and drainage networks.

• Chaos
• Fractals
• Fraktale
• Geophysik
• Geowisssenschaften
• Simulation
• calculus
• data analysis
• earth sciences
• geophysics
• geoscience
• model
• nichtlineare Dynamik
• nonlinear dynamics
• optimization

From the reviews:

"The book by S. Hergarten gives a comprehensive overview on two recently developed approaches in the study of natural phenomenon, namely fractals and SOC. Positive about this book … is that focuses on geological examples, but it still gives the necessary theoretical background. Hence, the book can be read by geologists as a first contact with the theory of fractals and SOC. Another advantage is that the author looks at these new theories in a self-critical way … ." (André Vervoort, Geologica Belgica, Vol. 7 (3-4), 2004)

• Institute of Geology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

  Stefan Hergarten

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