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First Steps Towards Modeling a Multi-Scale Earth System

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Advances in Geocomputing

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences ((LNEARTH,volume 119))

Recent advances in computational geodynamics are applied to explore the link between Earth’s heat, its chemistry and its mechanical behavior. Computational thermal-mechanical solutions are now allowing us to understand Earth patterns by solving the basic physics of heat transfer. This approach is currently used to solve basic convection patterns of terrestrial planets. Applying the same methodology to smaller scales delivers promising similarities between observed and predicted structures which are often the site of mineral deposits. The new approach involves a fully coupled solution to the energy, momentum and continuity equations of the system at all scales, allowing the prediction of fractures, shear zones and other typical geological patterns out of a randomly perturbed initial state. The results of this approach are linking a global geodynamic mechanical framework over regional-scale mineral deposits down to the underlying micro-scale processes. Ongoing work includes the challenge of incorporating chemistry into the formulation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Exploration and Mining, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia

    Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, Thomas Poulet, Delphine Siret, Jie Liu, Bruce Hobbs, Alison Ord & Hans Muhlhaus

  2. Earth&Geographical Sciences, University of Western Australia, WA 6009, Australia

    Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, Thomas Poulet, Florian Fusseis, Klaus Gessner, Oliver Gaede, Bruce Hobbs & Alison Ord

  3. ETH Zürich, Institute of Geophysics, 8093 Hönggerberg, Switzerland

    Gabriele Morra

  4. ESSCC, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia

    Hans Muhlhaus

  5. Department of Geology & Geophysics and Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, University of Minnesota at Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

    David A. Yuen

  6. School of Geoscience, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia

    Roberto Weinberg

  7. School of Physical Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QD 4072, Australia

    Gideon Rosenbaum

Authors
  1. Klaus Regenauer-Lieb
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  2. Thomas Poulet
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  6. Klaus Gessner
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  7. Oliver Gaede
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  8. Gabriele Morra
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  9. Bruce Hobbs
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  10. Alison Ord
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  11. Hans Muhlhaus
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  12. David A. Yuen
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  13. Roberto Weinberg
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  14. Gideon Rosenbaum
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Regenauer-Lieb, K. et al. (2009). First Steps Towards Modeling a Multi-Scale Earth System. In: Advances in Geocomputing. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, vol 119. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85879-9_1

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