Geostatistics

• Geostatistics is a branch of statistics focusing on spatial or spatiotemporal datasets.
• Developed originally to predict probability distributions of ore grades for mining operations
• It is currently applied in diverse disciplines including petroleum geology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, geochemistry, geometallurgy, geography, forestry, environmental control, landscape ecology, soil science, and agriculture
• What we now regard as geostatistics applies to a specific set of models and techniques developed largely by Matheron (1963) in the 1960s to evaluate recoverable reserves for the mining industry.
• Geostatistics is intimately related to interpolation methods, but extends far beyond simple interpolationproblems
• Geostatistical techniques rely on statistical models that are based on random function (or random variable)theory to model the uncertainty associated with spatial estimation and simulation