Geology & Paleontology

Geology s.l. has for a long been a descriptive science, where observations were made about
a finite state and processes were merely recognized, but not modeled. New scientific opportunities have grown from recent developments in understanding of surface processes and tectonic processes. Together with the studies of the world climate, they marked the emergence of Earth System Science (ESS) as a new discipline. ESS deals with our planet as a complex, interacting system. The time scales involved range from hundreds to hundreds of millions of years and involve processes that are highly nonlinear in nature, presenting considerable challenges for the Geosciences community.