It is now nearly 25 years since the first textbook on geostatistics
("Traitj de gjostatistique appliquje" by G. Matheron) appeared in print
in 1962. In that time geostatis- tics has grown from an arcane theory
regarded with scepticism by statisticians and miners alike, to a
reputable scientific disci- pline which is routinely used in the
geosciences. In the mining industry, in particularly, comparisons
between predicted reserve estimates and actual production figures have
proved its worth. Few now doubt its usefulness as a statistical tool in
the earth sciences. Over the past quarter of a century, many
geostatistical case studies have been published but the vast majority of
these are routine applications of kriging. Our objective with this
volume is to present a series of innovative applications of
geostatistics. These range from a careful variographic analysis on
uranium data, through detailed studies on geologically complex deposits
right up to the latest nonlinear methods applied to deposits with highly
skew data distributions. Applications of new techniques such as the
external drift method for combining well data with seismic information
have also been included. Throughout the volume the accent has been put
on how to apply geostatistics in practice. Notation has been kept to a
mininmum and mathematical details have been relegated to annexes. We
hope that this will encourage readers to put the more sophis- ticated
techniques into practice in their own fields.