ISSN:
1573-8868
Keywords:
discriminant analysis
;
kriging
;
principal component analysis
;
robust M-estimation
;
separation of mixed populations
;
spatial trend
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Mathematics
Notes:
Abstract Typically, datasets originated from mining exploration sites, industrially polluted and hazardous waste sites are correlated spatially over the region under investigation. Ordinary kriging (OK) is a well-established geostatistical tool used for predicting variables, such as precious metal contents, biomass, species counts, and environmental pollutants at unsampled spatial locations based on data collected from the neighboring sampled locations at these sites. One of the assumptions required to perform OK is that the mean of the characteristic of concern is constant for the entire region under consideration (e.g., there is no spatial trend present in the contaminant distribution across the site). This assumption may be violated by dalasets obtained from environmental applications. The occurrence of spatial trend in a dataset collected from a polluted site is an indication of the presence of two or more statistical populations (strata) with significantly different mean concentrations. Use of OK in these situations can result in inaccurate kriging estimates with higher SDs which, in turn, can lead to incorrect decisions regarding all subsequent environmental monitoring and remediation activities. A univariate and a multivariate approach have been described to identify spatial trend that may be present at the site. The trend then is removed by subtracting the respective means from the corresponding populations. The results of OK before and after trend removal are being compared. Using a real dataset, it is shown that standard deviations (SDs) of the kriging estimates obtained after trend removal are uniformly smaller than the corresponding SDs of the estimates obtained without the trend removal.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02273526
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