Basic Research Needs for Geosciences - Energetics Meetings and ...

CROSSCUTTING ISSUE:THE MICROSOPIC BASIS OF MACROSCOPIC COMPLEXITYSCIENTIFIC IMPACTSEnvironmental complexity is pervasive but an understanding of its microscopic foundation isnot. Thus any insight gained from these studies would have an impact throughout environmentalscience. Specifically, there is a great need to better understand the interactions of physicalprocesses, chemical reactions, and biological communities across all scales.More specifically these studies offer the opportunity to identify the key variables that control theevolution of geological systems, especially those perturbed by human intervention. Thesevariables change from scale to scale, in both time and space, but merely being able to identifythose that exert the greatest control often represents major scientific progress.TECHNOLOGY IMPACTSThese studies offer many opportunities for practical applications. Perhaps foremost among themare scaling laws that could help predict relations between microscopic properties andmacroscopic flows. We also expect these studies to directly impact how information arrivingfrom small, possibly nanoscale, subsurface sensors can be integrated to represent larger scaleprocesses. Small sensors individually probe small environments. An understanding of thecollective information they provide can only be derived from knowledge of how small scalesconnect to large scales. More generally, we seek a fundamental basis for characterization,monitoring, and prediction of human-impacted geologic environments.Basic Research Needs for Geosciences: Facilitating 21 st Century Energy Systems 157