WHAT IS GEOSTATISTICS?

You need not be a statistician to make good use of geostatistics, but you may need the assistance, support, guidance of a (geo?)statistician. A good engineer, ecologist, biologist, plant scientist, hydrologist, soil physicist already has a good start, because geostatistics is only good science brought up to date by the recognition that natural phenomena are subject to spatial variation. Your study of geostatistics will not displace other knowledge that you have; rather, it will extend your knowledge and make it more useful.

(paraphrased from a quotation of William Edwards Deming)

A BIT OF HISTORY

The application of statistics to problems in geology and mining as well as to hydrology date back a considerable time. For a time, geostatistics meant statistics applied to geology or perhaps more generally to problems in the earth sciences. Beginning in the mid-60's and especially in the mid-70's it became much more closely affiliated with the work of Georges Matheron and perhaps that connection is still the prevailing one today. Because much of his early work and also that of his students appeared primarily in French it was not as well known in the US and other countries. Several events began to change that however. In 1975 a NATO ASI was held near Rome, Italy on Advanced Geostatistics in the Mining Industry. The proceedings contained papers that were primarily in English. This had been preceded by a set of notes (by Matheron) prepared for a summer program in Fontainebleau. These notes were in English but not readily available. A more definitive theoretical article appeared in the J. Applied Probability in 1973.

Professeur Matheron was at the Ecole Normale Superieure des Mines de Paris (School of Mines), one of the Grande Ecoles. As part of a general move of research units out from the main location in Paris (adjacent to the Jardin du Luxembourg), Matheron established the Centre de Morphologie Mathematique. Later this became two programs, one on mathematical morphology and on on geostatistics. Matheron retired as Director of the Center only last year. Jean Serra's two volume series on mathematical morphology and image analysis is well-known and is based on Matheron's earlier book on random set theory. Two of Matheron's students were instrumental in implanting geostatistics in North America. Andre Journel moved to Stanford University in 1978 and also co-authored Mining Geostatistics with Ch. Huijbrechts. Michel David had earlier moved to the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and in 1977 published Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation. Journel was in the Department of Applied Earth Sciences but more recently that department has been closed and he is now in the Department of Petroleum Engineering and has established (with the aid of various oil companies) the Stanford Center for Reservoir Forecasting.

Matheron's work was not very well accepted in the statistical community for a period of time although a number of prominent statisticians were visitors at Fountainebleau in the '70's, '80's and '90's. In part this was because of a feeling that some of the work was a duplication of results that were already well-known but with different names. Matheron's propensity to only publish in French and only in "internal notes" at the Center probably contributed to this perception. Now however, geostatistics has established a place for itself both within the statistics journals and at national meeings. In the mid-'80's, with the help of M. Armstrong, an index of those notes was published in Mathematical Geology, while it was possible to order zeroxed copies from the Center there was no generally accessible repository outside of the Center. The index noted above is now well out of date. Again with the assistance of M. Armstrong, a small number of these notes have appeared as journal articles. GLOSSARY

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