17th Seminar
Because of various components, different gas phases and stars, their mutual interactions, and largely varying timescales galaxies represent highly complex systems. Competing but also counteracting processes occur that depend on the physical state of a region and its location in the galaxy and which are theoretically and empirically elaborated. Evolutionary models can therefore make use of them. Nevertheless, all the regions in a galaxy are coupled by means of mass and energy exchange. Since the processes vary temporally and spatially but within a network of interrelations, this complexity must be treated in the prescription of the modeling scheme. As the most sophisticated treatment that takes the dynamics of the individual galactic components into account as well as the interaction processes and can also trace specific element abundances is so-called chemodynamics. Here a general introduction to the chemo-dynamical treatment of galaxy evolution and remarks on particular advantages and successes of this approach are presented.