RUNDLE, John B.
University of California
Davis - USA

TURCOTTE, Donald L.
University of California
Davis - USA

MALAMUD, Bruce D.
Environmental Monitoring and Modelling Research Group
London - United Kingdom

Abstract
The Earth is a dynamic planet, with the interaction between the brittle crust and the mantle resulting in localized earthquakes on a large scale and fractures on a much smaller scale. Recently, statistical physics approaches have been developed to understand the process of tensile and shear fracture, friction, crack interaction and damage mechanics as models for processes of earthquakes on fault systems, crustal processes, fracture and flow. Because earthquakes are an example of complex, driven nonlinear threshold systems, recent research has been successful in relating the dynamics of these processes to similar processes in neurobiology, solid state physics, sandpiles, driven foams, magnetic domain de-pinning and Barkhausen noise. Nucleation and critical phenomena in the context of meanfield systems have been used to develop models for the scaling phenomena often observed in these systems. In this session, we welcome all contributions, both theoretical and applied, on the use of statistical physics in understanding fracture, damage processes and earthquakes in both earth materials and earth systems. Contributions that include both theory and applications,and explore the interplay between theory, experiment and computation are particularly welcome. We foresee both a lively oral and poster session, with several broad overview talks given by key speakers, coupled with both oral and poster contributions on the latest developments in this dynamic area.