Predictability and Nonlinear Modelling in Natural Sciences and Economics

1. Geophysics.- Karl Popper and the accountability of scientific models.- Evaluation of forecasts.- The Liouville equation and prediction of forecast skill.- An improved formula to describe error growth in meteorological models.- Searching for periodic motions in long-time series.- Comparison study of the response of the climate system to major volcanic eruptions and el nino events.- Detection of a pertubed equator-pole temperature gradient in a spectral model of the atmospheric circulation.- A simple two-dimensional climate model with ocean and atmosphere coupling.- Climate modelling at different scales of space.- 2. Agriculture.- Simulation of effects of climatic change on cauliflower production.- Validation of large scale process-oriented models for managing natural resource populations: a case study.- Uncertainty of predictions in supervised pest control in winter wheat, its price and its causes.- The implications and importance of non-linear responses in modelling the growth and development of wheat.- Growth curve analysis of sedentary plant parasitic nematodes in relation to plant resistance and tolerance.- 3. Population Biology.- Using chaos to understand biological dynamics.- Qualitative analysis of unpredictability: a case study from childhood epidemics.- Control and prediction in seasonally driven population models.- Simple theoretical models and population predictions.- Individual based population modelling.- Ecological systems are not dynamical systems: some consequences of individual variability.- Spatio-temporal organization mediated by hierarchy in time scales in ensembles of predator-prey pairs.- Continental expansion of plant disease: a survey of some recent results.- Modelling of fish behavior.- 4. Systems sciences.- Understanding uncertain environmental systems.- System identification by approximate realization.- Sensitivity analysis versus uncertainty analysis: when to use what?.- Monte Carlo estimation of uncertainty contributions from several independent multivariate sources.- Assessing sensitivities and uncertainties in models: a critical evaluation.- UNCSAM: a software tool for sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of mathematical models.- Set-membership identification of nonlinear conceptual models.- Parameter sensitivity and the quality of model predictions.- Towards a metrics for simulation model validation.- Use of a Fourier decomposition technique in aquatic ecosystems modelling.- Multiobjective inverse problems with ecological and economical motivations.- An expert-opinion approach to the prediction problem in complex systems.- 5. Environmental Sciences.- Critical loads and a dynamic assessment of ecosystem recovery.- Uncertainty analysis on critical loads for forest soils in Finland.- Monte Carlo simulations in ecological risk assessment.- Sensitivity analysis of a model for pesticide leaching and accumulation.- Bayesian uncertainty analysis in water quality modelling.- Modelling dynamics of air pollution dispersion in mesoscale.- Uncertainty factors analysis in linear water quality models.- Uncertainty analysis and risk assessment combined: application to a bioaccumulation model.- Diagnosis of model applicability by identification of incompatible data sets illustrated on a pharmacokinetic model for dioxins in mamals.- Regional calibration of a steady state model to assess critical acid loads.- Uncertainty analysis for the computation of greenhouse gas concentrations in IMAGE.- 6. Economics.- Forecast uncertainty in economics.- Some aspects of nonlinear discrete-time descriptor systems in economics.- Quasi-periodic and strange, chaotic attractors in Hick's nonlinear trade cycle model.- Monte Carlo experimentation for large scale forward-looking economic models.- Erratic dynamics in a restricted tatonnement process with two and three goods.- Chaotic dynamics in a two-dimensional overlapping generation model: a numerical investigation.- Nonlinearity and forecasting aspects of periodically integra...