We live on a soft matter landscape. Earth materials such as soil, mud, ice and rocks exist in a fuzzy state between solid and fluid, depending on the timescales considered. Observed soft Earth behaviors such as glassy dynamics, strain localization, the encoding of memory in microstructure, active matter, and complex yielding are familiar themes in soft matter physics. However the mixtures, excitations, geometries and scales associated with soft Earth problems present novel challenges. Recent research has shown how frontiers in geophysics are also frontiers in soft matter physics and how combining these fields may lead to advances and insights in both. This conference aims to bring together researchers from these relevant primary fields. Rather than focus on solved problems, we will encourage participants to present open questions and challenges that will encourage new collaborations and novel approaches. We invite researchers covering all relevant areas: from theory and simulation of creep and yielding in amorphous materials, to experiments revealing novel multi-scale dynamics of earth (or earth-inspired) materials, to geophysical field observations that demand new–or at least non-traditional–theoretical and experimental approaches. Problems related to landslides, earthquakes, erosion, glaciers, and novel or exotic transport phenomena of earth materials are welcome.

PLEASE NOTE: Thank you for your participation in the "Hard Problems in Soft Earth Geophysics" Conference. Participants are welcome to bring a poster, this conference is not holding a poster session instead poster boards will be provided for posters to be displayed for viewing and discussionduring all conference week. Each poster board is 4 feet high x 6 feet wide. We ask that the posters be no larger than 44 inches high x 34 inches wide at the most (it is important to follow these measurements or posters may be turned down due to limited space).