Overview:
The 38th Annual Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium will be held from Friday-Sunday, October 5-7, 2007 at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, Durham, NC.
A copy of Complexity of Geomorphology, 2007, the proceedings of this symposium, is included in the registration fee.
An optional overnight field trip to the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC [ visiting barrier islands and Cape Lookout ] will precede the symposium on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 4-5.
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Talks, by invited speakers, will take place on Saturday, and on Sunday morning, with discussion sessions interspersed throughout. The symposium consists of a single session, so that participants can be involved in all the talks and discussions. Contributed posters will be on display through Saturday and Sunday, with some breaks allotted to poster attendance and conversations. Each participant will receive a bound volume containing papers corresponding to the talks--the latest addition to the Binghamton Geomorphology series.
Complexity of Geomorphology
When we look at the Earth’s surface, what do we see? Do landscapes bring to mind straightforward relationships between forcing and response, or do they suggest nonlinear feedbacks leading to the emergence of large-scale structures? Do complicated arrangements of flow, sediment transport, and vegetation imply complicated causes, or do we look for simple interactions that give rise to self-organized patterns and complex dynamics?
For many geomorphologists, the answers to these questions have been shifting; perspectives arising from complex-systems research have opened up new ways of understanding surface processes.
The broad umbrella of ‘complex systems’ that spring from nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory also encompasses related approaches including: self-similarity and (multi)fractals; emergence and self-organization; network analysis; and self-organized criticality.
The speakers list for this symposium brings together geographers, geologists, and engineers using complex-systems concepts and techniques to address geomorphologic questions.
Participants will learn about state-of-the-art modeling and data-analysis techniques, and the advances in our understanding of surface processes they are facilitating. If you are a graduate student, researcher, or professor who would like to learn about these topics and/or present a poster, you are welcome!
The Symposium is sponsored by the the following:
