Geologic processes are generally too slow, too rare, or too deep to be observed in-situ and to be monitored with a resolution high enough to understand their dynamics. Understandably, analogue experiments and numerical simulation have become an integral part of the Earth explorer's toolbox to select, formulate, and test hypotheses on the origin and evolution of geologic phenomena. However, experimental and computer simulations using analogue and numerical models, respectively, have evolved rather separately and independently, often without much interaction of the respective communities.

Here, we intend to foster synergy between experimentalists and modellers from various fields of geologic research including tectonics, structural geology, and rock mechanics, but also volcanology, geomorphology, and sedimentology, by providing a platform to present their research to a multi-disciplinary audience. Modelling methods may include spatially “discrete” methods, such as sandbox and discrete-element modelling, “continuous” methods, such as wax models and numerical finite-element and finite-difference models, as well as analytical techniques.

We invite contributions demonstrating the state-of-the-art in analogue and numerical modelling on a variety of spatial and temporal scales, from earthquakes, landslides and volcanic eruptions to brittle-ductile faulting, plate tectonics and landscape evolution. We welcome especially those presentations that try to highlight strengths, challenge the limits, or compare/combine the different modelling methods in order to realistically simulate and better understand the Earth's behaviour.