Margaret A. Oliver

This brief will provide a bridge in succinct form between the geostatistics textbooks and the computer manuals for `push-button' practice. It is becoming increasingly important for practitioners, especially neophytes, to understand what underlies modern geostatistics and the currently available software so that they can choose sensibly and draw correct conclusions from their analysis and mapping. The brief will contain some theory, but only that needed for practitioners to understand the essential steps in analyses. It will guide readers sequentially through the stages of properly designed sampling, exploratory data analysis, variography (computing the variogram and modelling it), followed by ordinary kriging and finally mapping kriged estimates and their errors. There will be short section on trend and universal kriging. Other types of kriging will be mentioned so that readers can delve further in the substantive literature to tackle more complex tasks.

Geostatistics is essential for environmental scientists. Weather and climate vary from place to place, soil varies at every scale at which it is examined, and even man-made attributes – such as the distribution of pollution – vary. The techniques used in geostatistics are ideally suited to the needs of environmental scientists, who use them to make the best of sparse data for prediction, and top plan future surveys when resources are limited. Geostatistical technology has advanced much in the last few years and many of these developments are being incorporated into the practitioner’s repertoire. This second edition describes these techniques for environmental scientists. Topics such as stochastic simulation, sampling, data screening, spatial covariances, the variogram and its modeling, and spatial prediction by kriging are described in rich detail. At each stage the underlying theory is fully explained, and the rationale behind the choices given, allowing the reader to appreciate the assumptions and constraints involved.