Nonlinear Geophysics: Why We Need It

Few geoscientists would deny that effects are often sensitively dependent on causes, or that their amplification is commonly so strong as to give rise to qualitatively new “emergent” properties, or that geostructures are typically embedded one within another in a hierarchy. Starting in the 1980s, a growing number felt the need to underline the absolute importance of such nonlinearity through workshops and conferences. Building on this, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) organized a nonlinear processes (NP) section in 1990; AGU established a nonlinear geophysics (NG) focus group in 1997; and both unions began collaborating on an academic journal, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, in 1994.