Quantum systems are never perfectly isolated from their environment and inevitably interact with them. A finite coupling to environment can not only gives rise to a given system temperature, but can also induce dephasing and decoherence. At the simplest level, this is acounted for by the Lindblad equation. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the system-environment coupling, such that it induces a given thermal state for the system. Then, by manipulating the temperature or the coupling constant, the system is forced to adjuts itself to the new thermodynamic condition, and will eventually thermalize. By focusing on several systems of interest, such as Kitaev's spin liquid on a two leg ladder, the dynamics of thermalization and the associated time and lengthscales will be investigated both numerically and analitically. Comparisons to existing experiments will also be made.