Special Issue: Modeling of ore-forming and geoenvironmental systems

摘要

In recent years, numerical modeling and computational simulation methods have provided new ways to deal with many problems in the geoscience fields, for which traditionally-used theoretical and experimental methods may not be valid due to the large time and length scales involved in the problems themselves. The experimental method (including the observation) is used to produce real data for establishing the fundamental physical and chemical laws, while theoretical (mathematical) analysis is used to establish the corresponding fundamental physical and chemical laws as well as governing equations for describing inherent characteristics of a problem. In addition, theoretical (mathematical) analysis can produce exact theoretical solutions for some kinds of scientific and engineering problems. Due to the complex and complicated nature of geoscience problems, the computational simulation method has found more and more applications in the field of geosciences. This gradually changes the traditional geosciences from a description-dominated empirical discipline into a computational-simulation-dominated scientific discipline. As a direct result, many hitherto unsolvable geoscience problems can be nowadays solved using numerical modeling and computational simulation methods.