Typical fluid particle trajectories are sensitive to changes in their initial conditions. This makes the assessment of flow models and observations from individual tracer samples unreliable. Behind complex and sensitive tracer patterns, however, there exists a robust skeleton of material surfaces, Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs), shaping those patterns. Free from the uncertainties of single trajectories, LCSs frame, quantify, and even forecast key aspects of material transport. Several diagnostic quantities have been proposed to visualize LCSs. More recent mathematical approaches identify LCSs precisely through their impact on fluid deformation. This review focuses on the latter developments, illustrating their applications to geophysical fluid dynamics.

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We prove analytic criteria for the existence of finite-time attracting and repelling material surfaces and lines in threedimensional unsteady flows. The longest lived such structures define coherent structures in a Lagrangian sense. Our existence criteria involve the invariants of the velocity gradient tensor along fluid trajectories. An alternative approach to coherent structures is shown to lead to their characterization as local maximizers of the largest finite-time Lyapunov exponent field computed directly from particle paths. Both approaches provide effective tools for extracting distinguished Lagrangian structures from three-dimensional velocity data. We illustrate the results on steady and unsteady ABC-type flows.