Nonlinear Dynamics as a Tool for Revealing Synchronization and Ordering in Geophysical Time Series: Application to Caucasus Seismicity

Abstract

It is a common statement in scientific literature that the complexity of nature has always been an inevitable problem in our efforts towards understanding spatial forms of natural objects and temporal evolution of natural processes. "Complex" and "complexity" are now quite popular scientific terms, though there is little consensus on their official definitions and they still have a variety of meanings depending on the context [Arecci, 1996; Shiner, 1999]. This is so because the study of complexity in both dynamical and structural sense is in its infancy, being at the same time a rapidly developing field in the forefront of many areas of science, including mathematics, physics, geophysics, economics, biology, etc. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.