Viewing Earth's surface as a soft matter landscape.

摘要: The Earth's surface is composed of a staggering diversity particulate-fluid mixtures: dry to wet, dilute dense, colloidal granular, and attractive repulsive particles. This material variety matched by the range relevant stresses strain rates, from laminar turbulent flows, steady intermittent forcing, leading anything rapid catastrophic landslides slow relaxation soil rocks over geologic timescales. Geophysical flows sculpt landscapes, but also threaten human lives infrastructure. From physics point view, virtually all Earth planetary landscapes are soft matter, in sense they both deformable sensitive collective effects. materials, however, often involve compositions flow geometries that have not yet been examined physics. In this review we explore how soft-matter perspective has helped illuminate, even predict, rich dynamics materials their associated landscapes. We highlight some novel phenomena geophysical challenge, will hopefully inspire, more fundamental work matter.