Correction to: Development and Evaluation of Geostatistical Methods for Non-Euclidean-Based Spatial Covariance Matrices

Mathematical Geosciences - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake in equation 9.     

Multivariate Spatial Modeling for Geostatistical Data Using Convolved Covariance Functions

Soil pollution data collection typically studies multivariate measurements at sampling locations, e.g., lead, zinc, copper or cadmium levels. With increased collection of such multivariate geostatistical spatial data, there arises the need for flexible explanatory stochastic models. Here, we propose a general constructive approach for building suitable models based upon convolution of covariance functions. We begin with a general theorem which asserts that, under weak conditions, cross convolution of covariance functions provides a valid cross covariance function. We also obtain a result on dependence induced by such convolution. Since, in general, convolution does not provide closed-form integration, we discuss efficient computation. We then suggest introducing such specification through a Gaussian process to model multivariate spatial random effects within a hierarchical model. We note that modeling spatial random effects in this way is parsimonious relative to say, the linear model of coregionalization. Through a limited simulation, we informally demonstrate that performance for these two specifications appears to be indistinguishable, encouraging the parsimonious choice. Finally, we use the convolved covariance model to analyze a trivariate pollution dataset from California.     

Means and Covariance Functions for Geostatistical Compositional Data: an Axiomatic Approach

This work focuses on the characterization of the central tendency of a sample of compositional data. It provides new results about theoretical properties of means and covariance functions for compositional data, with an axiomatic perspective. Original results that shed new light on geostatistical modeling of compositional data are presented. As a first result, it is shown that the weighted arithmetic mean is the only central tendency characteristic satisfying a small set of axioms, namely continuity, reflexivity, and marginal stability. Moreover, this set of axioms also implies that the weights must be identical for all parts of the composition. This result has deep consequences for spatial multivariate covariance modeling of compositional data. In a geostatistical setting, it is shown as a second result that the proportional model of covariance functions (i.e., the product of a covariance matrix and a single correlation function) is the only model that provides identical kriging weights for all components of the compositional data. As a consequence of these two results, the proportional model of covariance function is the only covariance model compatible with reflexivity and marginal stability.     

Bayesian Inference of Spatial Covariance Parameters

This paper shows the application of the Bayesian inference approach in estimating spatial covariance parameters. This methodology is particularly valuable where the number of experimental data is small, as occurs frequently in modeling reservoirs in petroleum engineering or when dealing with hydrodynamic variables in groundwater hydrology. There are two main advantages of Bayesian estimation: firstly that the complete distribution of the parameters is estimated and, from this distribution, it is a straightforward procedure to obtain point estimates, confidence regions, and interval estimates; secondly, all the prior information about the parameters (information available before the data are collected) is included in the inference procedure through their prior distribution. The results obtained from simulation studies are discussed.     

Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Spatial Covariance Parameters

In this paper, the maximum likelihood method for inferring the parameters of spatial covariances is examined. The advantages of the maximum likelihood estimation are discussed and it is shown that this method, derived assuming a multivariate Gaussian distribution for the data, gives a sound criterion of fitting covariance models irrespective of the multivariate distribution of the data. However, this distribution is impossible to verify in practice when only one realization of the random function is available. Then, the maximum entropy method is the only sound criterion of assigning probabilities in absence of information. Because the multivariate Gaussian distribution has the maximum entropy property for a fixed vector of means and covariance matrix, the multinormal distribution is the most logical choice as a default distribution for the experimental data. Nevertheless, it should be clear that the assumption of a multivariate Gaussian distribution is maintained only for the inference of spatial covariance parameters and not necessarily for other operations such as spatial interpolation, simulation or estimation of spatial distributions. Various results from simulations are presented to support the claim that the simultaneous use of maximum likelihood method and the classical nonparametric method of moments can considerably improve results in the estimation of geostatistical parameters.     

Using Multivariate Statistical and Geostatistical Methods to Identify Spatial Variability of Trace Elements in Agricultural Soils in Dongguan City,Guangdong,China

Dongguan (东莞) City, located in the Pearl River Delta, South China, is famous for its rapid industrialization in the past 30 years. A total of 90 topsoil samples have been collected from agricultural fields, including vegetable and orchard soils in the city, and eight heavy metals (As, Cu, Cd,Cr, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn) and other items (pH values and organic matter) have been analyzed, to evaluate the influence of anthropie activities on the environmental quality of agricultural soils and to identify the spatial distribution of trace elements and possible sources of trace elements. The elements Hg, Pb, and Cd have accumulated remarkably here, incomparison with the soil background content of elements in Guangdong (广东) Province. Pollution is more serious in the western plain and the central region, which are heavily distributed with industries and rivers. Multivariate and geostatistical methods have been applied to differentiate the influences of natural processes and human activities on the pollution of heavy metals in topsoils in the study area. The results of cluster analysis (CA) and factor analysis (FA) show that Ni, Cr, Cu, Zn, and As are grouped in factor F1,Pb in F2, and Cd and Hg in F3, respectively. The spatial pattern of the three factors may be well demonstrated by geostatistical analysis. It is shown that the first factor could be considered as a natural source controlled by parent rocks. The second factor could be referred to as "industrial and traffic pollution sources". The source of the third factor is mainly controlled by long-term anthropic activities ,ad a consequence of agricultural fossil fuel consumption and atmospheric deposition.     

Geostatistical Rock Physics Inversion for Predicting the Spatial Distribution of Porosity and Saturation in the Critical Zone

Mathematical Geosciences - Understanding the subsurface structure and function in the near-surface groundwater system, including fluid flow, geomechanical, and weathering processes, requires...     

Estimating Regional Hydraulic Conductivity Fields—A Comparative Study of Geostatistical Methods

Geostatistical estimations of the hydraulic conductivity field (K) in the Carrizo aquifer, Texas, are performed over three regional domains of increasing extent: 1) the domain corresponding to a three-dimensional groundwater flow model previously built (model domain); 2) the area corresponding to the 10 counties encompassing the model domain (County domain), and; 3) the full extension of the Carrizo aquifer within Texas (Texas domain). Two different approaches are used: 1) an indirect approach where transmissivity (T) is estimated first and K is retrieved through division of the T estimate by the screen length of the wells, and; 2) a direct approach where K data are kriged directly. Due to preferential well screen emplacement, and scarcity of sampling in the deeper portions of the formation (> 1 km), the available data set is biased toward high values of hydraulic conductivities. Kriging combined with linear regression, simple kriging with varying local means, kriging with an external drift, and cokriging allow the incorporation of specific capacity as secondary information. Prediction performances (assessed through cross-validation) differ according to the chosen approach, the considered variable (log-transformed or back-transformed), and the scale of interest. For the indirect approach, kriging of log T with varying local means yields the best estimates for both log-transformed and back-transformed variables in the model domain. For larger regional scales (County and Texas domains), cokriging performs generally better than other kriging procedures when estimating both (log T)^∗ and T^∗. Among procedures using the direct approach, the best prediction performances are obtained using kriging of log K with an external drift. Overall, geostatistical estimation of the hydraulic conductivity field at regional scales is rendered difficult by both preferential well location and preferential emplacement of well screens in the most productive portions of the aquifer. Such bias creates unrealistic hydraulic conductivity values, in particular, in sparsely sampled areas.     

Measures of Parameter Uncertainty in Geostatistical Estimation and Geostatistical Optimal Design

Studies of site exploration, data assimilation, or geostatistical inversion measure parameter uncertainty in order to assess the optimality of a suggested scheme. This study reviews and discusses measures for parameter uncertainty in spatial estimation. Most measures originate from alphabetic criteria in optimal design and were transferred to geostatistical estimation. Further rather intuitive measures can be found in the geostatistical literature, and some new measures will be suggested in this study. It is shown how these measures relate to the optimality alphabet and to relative entropy. Issues of physical and statistical significance are addressed whenever they arise. Computational feasibility and efficient ways to evaluate the above measures are discussed in this paper, and an illustrative synthetic case study is provided. A major conclusion is that the mean estimation variance and the averaged conditional integral scale are a powerful duo for characterizing conditional parameter uncertainty, with direct correspondence to the well-understood optimality alphabet. This study is based on cokriging generalized to uncertain mean and trends because it is the most general representative of linear spatial estimation within the Bayesian framework. Generalization to kriging and quasi-linear schemes is straightforward. Options for application to non-Gaussian and non-linear problems are discussed.     

Correction: Geostatistical Rock Physics Inversion for Predicting the Spatial Distribution of Porosity and Saturation in the Critical Zone

Mathematical Geosciences -     

Towards Geostatistical Learning for the Geosciences: A Case Study in Improving the Spatial Awareness of Spectral Clustering

Mathematical Geosciences - The particularities of geosystems and geoscience data must be understood before any development or implementation of statistical learning algorithms. Without such...     

Geostatistical Evaluation of the Mechanical Properties of Rock Mass for TBM Tunnelling by Seismic Reflection Method

Summary. The evaluation of the rock mass mechanical properties by the seismic reflection method and TBM driving is proposed for TBM tunnelling. The relationship between the reflection number derived from the three-dimensional seismic reflection method and the rock strength index (RSI) derived from TBM driving data is examined, and the methodology of conversion from the reflection number to the RSI is proposed. Furthermore a geostatistical prediction methodology to provide a three-dimensional geotechnical profile ahead of the tunnel face is proposed. The performance of this prediction method is verified by actual field data.     

Permutation Methods for Determining the Significance of Spatial Dependence

A class of multivariate nonparametric tests for spatial dependence, Multivariate Sequential Permutation Analyses (MSPA), is developed and applied to the analysis of spatial data. These tests allow the significance level (P value) of the spatial correlation to be computed for each lag class. MSPA is shown to be related to the variogram and other measures of spatial correlation. The interrelationships of these measures of spatial dependence are discussed and the measures are applied to synthetic and real data. The resulting plot of significance level vs. lag spacing, or P-gram, provides insight into the modeling of the semivariogram and the semimADogram. Although the test clearly rejects some models of correlation, the chief value of the test is to quantify the strength of spatial correlation, and to provide evidence that spatial correlation exists     

Spatial Variability of Rock Depth in Bangalore Using Geostatistical, Neural Network and Support Vector Machine Models

Geospatial technology is increasing in demand for many applications in geosciences. Spatial variability of the bed/hard rock is vital for many applications in geotechnical and earthquake engineering problems such as design of deep foundations, site amplification, ground response studies, liquefaction, microzonation etc. In this paper, reduced level of rock at Bangalore, India is arrived from the 652 boreholes data in the area covering 220 km². In the context of prediction of reduced level of rock in the subsurface of Bangalore and to study the spatial variability of the rock depth, Geostatistical model based on Ordinary Kriging technique, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models have been developed. In Ordinary Kriging, the knowledge of the semi-variogram of the reduced level of rock from 652 points in Bangalore is used to predict the reduced level of rock at any point in the subsurface of the Bangalore, where field measurements are not available. A new type of cross-validation analysis developed proves the robustness of the Ordinary Kriging model. ANN model based on multi layer perceptrons (MLPs) that are trained with Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation algorithm has been adopted to train the model with 90% of the data available. The SVM is a novel type of learning machine based on statistical learning theory, uses regression technique by introducing loss function has been used to predict the reduced level of rock from a large set of data. In this study, a comparative study of three numerical models to predict reduced level of rock has been presented and discussed.     

涡动相关仪观测蒸散量的插补方法比较

涡动相关仪在长时间连续观测中,观测数据会有不同程度的缺失.应用6种不同的插补方法(平均昼夜变化法MDV,非线性回归方法NLR,动态线性回归方法DLR,查表法LUT,FAO-PM方法,HANTS方法)对北京密云站2007年涡动相关仪观测蒸散量数据进行了插补.结果表明:LUT方法在不同数据缺失时均得到较好结果(均方差小于8 W/m2);MDV和NLR方法更适合于短时间数据缺失的插补:DLR和FAO-PM方法在观测数据出现连续波动时插补结果较差.由LUT、DLR、NLR、HANTS、FAO-PM方法得到的年蒸散量分别为395.8 mm、409.9 mm、393.5 mm、390.7 mm、399.4 mm,差异在2.3～19.2 mm之间变化.对比分析了LUT方法得到的年蒸散量(潜热通量)与净辐射、降水量以及LAS观测潜热通量间的变化规律,表明插补结果合理.     

Kriging and Spatial Design Accelerated by Orders of Magnitude: Combining Low-Rank Covariance Approximations with FFT-Techniques

Computational power poses heavy limitations to the achievable problem size for Kriging. In separate research lines, Kriging algorithms based on FFT, the separability of certain covariance functions, and low-rank representations of covariance functions have been investigated, all three leading to drastic speedup factors. The current study combines these ideas, and so combines the individual speedup factors of all ideas. This way, we reduce the mathematics behind Kriging to a computational complexity of only $\mathcal{O}(dL^{*} \log L^{*})$ , where L ^? is the number of points along the longest edge of the involved lattice of estimation points, and d is the physical dimensionality of the lattice. For separable (factorized) covariance functions, the results are exact, and nonseparable covariance functions can be approximated well through sums of separable components. Only outputting the final estimate as an explicit map causes computational costs of $\mathcal{O}(n)$ , where n is the number of estimation points. In illustrative numerical test cases, we achieve speedup factors up to 10⁸ (eight orders of magnitude), and we can treat problem sizes of up to 15 trillion and two quadrillion estimation points for Kriging and spatial design, respectively, within seconds on a contemporary desktop computer. The current study assumes second-order stationarity and simple Kriging on a regular, equispaced lattice, without working with restricted neighborhoods. Extensions to many other cases are straightforward.