Complexity, Connectivity, and Scale in Environmental Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental systems (e.g., climatic, hydrologic, ecologic, biologic) are complex nonlinear dynamically evolving systems. They are generally made up of large number of components that are interconnected and vary across space and time. Unraveling the nature and degree of complexity and connectivity in environmental systems across different spatial and temporal scales, as well as their interactions with other systems (e.g., socio-economic systems), has always been a challenge.

Numerous scientific concepts and methods have been proposed and applied to various environmental systems, processes, and problems. Despite this progress, our understanding of how environmental systems function remains inadequate. There are several reasons for this, including the inherent spatiotemporal complexity of environmental systems; natural and anthropogenic influences; constraints in environmental data and computational power; and the absence of a strong scientific theory that can represent all types of connections.

This Special Issue aims to advance our understanding of the complexity, connectivity, and scaling properties associated with environmental systems. The relevance and role of modern complex systems science theories, such as chaos theory, complex network theory, entropy theory, and fractal theory, in studying environmental systems are of particular focus. Papers for this Special Issue may cover a wide range of aspects from these theories relevant to environmental systems and address the following topics, among others:

1. Development of new methods for environmental modeling and prediction;
2. Application of theories to various processes and problems associated with environmental systems;
3. Linking the complexity and predictability of environmental systems;
4. Coupling/integrating multiple theories for holistic modeling of environmental systems;
5. Data-related issues in the application of the theories to environmental systems.

Prof. Dr. Bellie Sivakumar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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