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Institute of Aeronautical Technology (ITA) and World Institute for Space Environment Research (WISER),

CTA/ITA/IEFM, Sao Jose dos Campos-SP, 12228-900, Brazil A. C.-L. Chian2 and R. A. Miranda3

National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and World Institute for Space Environment Research (WISER),

P. 0. Box 515, Sao Jose dos Campos-SP, 12227-010, Brazil

Received 7 March, 2004; accepted in revised form 10 March, 2004

Spatiotemporal chaos is the key to understand the dynamics of turbulence in plasmas, fluids, chemical reactions and optics. In trying to understand the nature of the transition to turbulence with a dynamical systems approach, one is led to consider the investigation of spatiotemporal chaos in extended systems, which can be described by numerical solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations. Spatiotemporal chaos refers to the state where the system is chaotic in its time evolution and erratic in space, with a sharp decay of spatial correlations with distance. A spatiotemporal chaotic behavior can reflect asymptotic chaos when it is governed by an attracting chaotic set, or transient chaos when it is governed by nonattracting chaotic sets known as chaotic saddles [ 1].