Page 15 - Fundamentals of Computational Geoscience Numerical Methods and Algorithms

Chapter 1
Introduction

Geoscience is a fundamental natural science discipline dealing with the origin,
evolutionary history and behaviour of the planet Earth. As a result of its complicated
and complex nature, the Earth system not only provides the necessary materials and
environment for mankind to live, but also brings many types of natural disasters,
such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, floods and tornadoes, to mention
just a few. With the ever-increasing demand for improving our living standards, it
has been recognized that the existing natural resources will be exhausted in the near
future and that our living environments are, in fact, deteriorating. To maintain the
sustainable development of our living standards and the further improvement of our
living environments, an inevitable and challenging task that geoscientists are now
confronting is how accurately to predict not only the occurrences of these natural
disasters, but also the locations of large concealed natural resources in the deep
Earth. For this reason, geoscientists must study the processes, rules and laws, by
which the Earth system operates, instead of simply describing and observing geo-
science phenomena. Specifically, geoscientists need to make greater efforts in the
following aspects relevant to solving contemporary geoscience problems: (1) the
complicated and complex interactions between multi-scales and multi-processes
occurring in the solid Earth; (2) gather, accumulate and analyze the large amount
of information and data that are essential to understand each of the controlling pro-
cesses within the interior of the Earth using modern observation equipment, mea-
surement tools, experimental instruments and information processing techniques;
(3) the intimate interplay between the solid Earth, biosphere, hydrosphere and atmo-
sphere. It is this intimate interplay that controls the global behaviour of the Earth
system. As a result, geoscientists must adopt scientific and predictive methods rel-
evant to conduction of contemporary geoscience research, instead of simply using
the traditional descriptive methods.
Computational science is a modern technological science discipline dealing
with the development and application of numerical methods, procedures, algo-
rithms and other numerical techniques for delivering numerical solutions for com-
plicated and complex scientific and engineering problems. With the rapid advances
and developments of modern computer technology, applications of computa-
tional science have penetrated almost all engineering fields: from the topological

C. Zhao et al., Fundamentals of Computational Geoscience, 1
Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences 122, DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-89743-9 1,
C Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009