  Collisionless plasmas, mostly present in astrophysical and space
environments, often require a kinetic treatment as given by the Vlasov
equation. Unfortunately, the six-dimensional Vlasov equation can only be solved
on very small parts of the considered spatial domain. However, in some cases,
e.g. magnetic reconnection, it is sufficient to solve the Vlasov equation in a
localized domain and solve the remaining domain by appropriate fluid models. In
this paper, we describe a hierarchical treatment of collisionless plasmas in
the following way. On the finest level of description, the Vlasov equation is
solved both for ions and electrons. The next courser description treats
electrons with a 10-moment fluid model incorporating a simplified treatment of
Landau damping. At the boundary between the electron kinetic and fluid region,
the central question is how the fluid moments influence the electron
distribution function. On the next coarser level of description the ions are
treated by an 10-moment fluid model as well. It may turn out that in some
spatial regions far away from the reconnection zone the temperature tensor in
the 10-moment description is nearly isotopic. In this case it is even possible
to switch to a 5-moment description. This change can be done separately for
ions and electrons. To test this multiphysics approach, we apply this full
physics-adaptive simulations to the Geospace Environmental Modeling (GEM)
challenge of magnetic reconnection.
