In geosciences, still many. Some leading ones: carbon sequestration, mineral resources (mining and associated environmental and political risks), origin of moon, earthquake prediction, age and Earth conditions of origin of life, magnetic reversals, mechanisms and speed of recovery from mass extinctions.<p>In all of these, earth scientist are likely to work across diverse size (diatom to outcrop to mountain range to solar system) and time (the lifetime of an organism, a species, an ecosystem, a biome) scales gathering data to create models. What do past carbon isotope ratios tell us, what's the size of the atmosphere. X-ray crystallography, surface area of a large copper deposit.<p>Geologists' datasets may be small for creating complex models, and they often are looking at unique processes, so they frequently write their own programs.