The Second European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Ap-
plications took place in Valencia, November 18-20, 1998. Two years have
past from the first meeting in Lisbon and the geostatistical community
has kept active in the environmental field. In these days of congress
inflation, we feel that continuity can only be achieved by ensuring
quality in the papers. For this reason, all papers in the book have been
reviewed by, at least, two referees, and care has been taken to ensure
that the reviewer comments have been incorporated in the final version
of the manuscript. We are thankful to the members of the scientific
committee for their timely review of the scripts. All in all, there are
three keynote papers from experts in soil science, climatology and
ecology and 43 contributed papers providing a good indication of the
status of geostatistics as applied in the environ- mental field all over
the world. We feel now confident that the geoENV conference series,
seeded around a coffee table almost six years ago, will march firmly
into the next century.