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Self-organized criticality: Does it have anything to do with criticality and is it useful?
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Snee Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Abstract. Three aspects of complexity are fractals, chaos, and self-organized criticality. There are many examples of the applicability of fractals in solid-earth geophysics, such as earthquakes and landforms. Chaos is widely accepted as being applicable to a variety of geophysical phenomena, for instance, tectonics and mantle convection. Several simple cellular-automata models have been said to exhibit self-organized criticality. Examples include the sandpile, forest fire and slider-blocks models. It is believed that these are directly applicable to landslides, actual forest fires, and earthquakes, respectively. The slider-block model has been shown to clearly exhibit deterministic chaos and fractal behaviour. The concept of self-similar cascades can explain self-organized critical behaviour. This approach also illustrates the similarities and differences with critical phenomena through association with the site-percolation and diffusion-limited aggregation models.
Full Article (PDF, 29 KB)
Citation: Turcotte, D. L.: Self-organized criticality: Does it have anything to do with criticality and is it useful?, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 8, 193-196, 2001. Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager
