From points of view ranging from science to public policy, there is a growing interest in modeling and simulation of geosystems and their applications. Some examples include petroleum exploration and recovery, underground waste disposal and cleanup of hazardous waste, earthquake prediction, weather prediction, and global climate change. Such modeling is fundamentally interdisciplinary; physical and mathematical modeling at appropriate scales, physical experiments, mathematical theory, probability and statistics, numerical approximations, and large-scale computational algorithms all have important roles to play. This conference facilitates communication between scientists of varying backgrounds and work environments facing similar issues in different fields, and provides a forum in which advances in parts of the larger modeling picture can become known to those working in other parts. These kinds of interactions are needed for meaningful progress in understanding and predicting complex physical phenomena in the geosciences.