Beschreibung
In many aspects science becomes conducted nowadays through technology and preferential criteria of economy. Thus investigation and knowledge is evidently linked to a speci?c purpose. Especially Earth science is confronted with two major human perspectives concerning our natural environment:sustainability of resources and assessment of risks. Both aspects are expressing urgent needs of the living society, but in the same way those needs are addressing a long lasting fundamental challenge which has so far not been met. Following on the patterns of economy and technology, the key is presumed to be found through a devel- mentoffeasibleconceptsforamanagement ofbothournaturalenvironmentand in one or the other way the realm of life. Although new techniques for obser- tion and analysis led to an increase of rather speci?c knowledge about particular phenomena, yet we fail now even more frequently to avoid unforeseen impli- tions and sudden changes of a situation. Obviously the improved technological tools and the assigned expectations on a management of nature still exceed our traditional scienti?c experience and accumulated competence. Earth- and Life- Sciences are nowadays exceedingly faced with the puzzling nature of an almost boundless network of relations, i. e., the complexity of phenomena with respect to their variability. The disciplinary notations and their particular approaches arethusnolongeraccountingsu?cientlyfortherecordedcontextofphenomena, for their permanent variability and their unpredictable implications. The large environmental changes of glacial climatic cycles, for instance, demonstrate this complexity of such a typical phenomenology.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction: Scale Aspects of Geo-Data Sampling; Scale in Geoscientific Modeling; Scale Aspects of Data.- Multiscale Representation of Data: Wavelets; Diffusion Methods for Form Generalization; Multiscale Aspects in the Management of Geometries.- Scale Problems in Physical Process Models: Wavelet and Multigrid Methods for Partial Differential Equations; Analytical Coupling of Scales; Upscaling of Hydrological Models by Means of Parameter Aggregation Technique; Parameterization of Turbulent Transport in the Atmosphere; Precipitation Dynamics; Sediment Transport; Water Uptake by Plant Roots.- Pathways towards Finding the Governor Geo-Processes: Fractals; Fractal Variability; Is the Earth Surface Critical?; Scale Problems in Geometric-Kinematic Modelling of Geological Objects; Depositional Systems and Missing Depositional Records; Multiscale Processes and the Reconstruction of Paleoclimate; Statistical-Dynamic Analysis of Precipitation Data.
