Mining Geostatistics

First published in 1978, this complete reference work on mining geostatistics attempts to synthesize the practical experience gained by researchers from the Centre de Morphologie Mathematique in France and by mining engineers and geologists all over the world who contributed their ideas. (Technology & Industrial)

This book addresses the practice of geostatistical simulation to evaluation of mineral reserves, prediction of recovered tonnages and mineral grades and the impact of mining dilution. Such prediction is absolutely critical for mine planning and investment decisions, yet it cannot be made on maps directly interpolated from present data. Various dilution factors need to be introduced to account for · the support effect: mining unit volumes are vastly different from composite data unit volumes · the information effect: future selection of ore/waste will be based on vastly different data than that presently available. Geostatistical simulations allow a rigorous evaluation of these effects on reserves recovery. These stochastic simulations have the potential to be for the mining industry what a wind tunnel is for aircraft design. This book is written by two expert geostatisticians--Journel is the pioneer of mining geostatistics--and established academics.

This book covers the main mining issues where geostatistics, a discipline founded in the 1960s to study regionalized variables measured at a limited number of points in space, is expected to play a role. Each chapter of the book is associated with a stage of the mining sequence, including the interpretation and geological modeling of mineral deposits, evaluation of in-situ and recoverable resources, long-term mine planning, short-term planning and ore control, geotechnics, geometallurgy and sampling. This work, featuring more than 150 illustrations, avoids the traditional laborious and crippling theoretical treatment of geostatistics and is systematically oriented toward a practical exhibition of the problems and proposed solutions. The writing is fluid and intended to involve the reader. The book is the fruit of more than 35 cumulative years of applied research by the authors, a professor at the University of Chile and a researcher at Mines ParisTech, carried out in collaboration with the Chilean company Codelco since the late 1990s. Despite focusing on copper porphyry deposits, the generalization of the methods presented to the entire mining industry is straightforward. The broad range of problems addressed, including generally neglected disciplines such as geotechnics, geometallurgy and sampling, and their practical presentation make this book unique and usable by a very wide audience – students, researchers, geologists, engineers, geotechnicians and metallurgists.

This book explains the integration of data of different support in Geostatistics. There is a common misconception in the mining industry that the data used for estimation/simulation should have the same size or support. However, Geostatistics provides the tools to integrate several types of information that may have different support. This book aims to explain these geostatistical tools and provides several examples of applications. The book is directed for a broad audience, including engineers, geologists, and students in the area of Geostatistics.

Developments in Geomathematics, 2: Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation focuses on the methodologies, processes, and principles involved in geostatistical ore reserve estimation, including the use of variogram, sampling, theoretical models, and variances and covariances. The publication first takes a look at elementary statistical theory and applications; contribution of distributions to mineral reserves problems; and evaluation of methods used in ore reserve calculations. Concerns cover estimation problems during a mine life, origin and credentials of geostatistics, precision of a sampling campaign and prediction of the effect of further sampling, exercises on grade-tonnage curves, theoretical models of distributions, and computational remarks on variances and covariances. The text then examines variogram and the practice of variogram modeling. Discussions focus on solving problems in one dimension, linear combinations and average values, theoretical models of isotropic variograms, the variogram as a geological features descriptor, and the variogram as the fundamental function in error computations. The manuscript ponders on statistical problems in sample preparation, orebody modeling, grade-tonnage curves, ore-waste selection, and planning problems, the practice of kriging, and the effective computation of block variances. The text is a valuable source of data for researchers interested in geostatistical ore reserve estimation.

This book covers the main mining issues where geostatistics, a discipline founded in the 1960s to study regionalized variables measured at a limited number of points in space, is expected to play a role. Each chapter of the book is associated with a stage of the mining sequence, including the interpretation and geological modeling of mineral deposits, evaluation of in-situ and recoverable resources, long-term mine planning, short-term planning and ore control, geotechnics, geometallurgy and sampling. This work, featuring more than 150 illustrations, avoids the traditional laborious and crippling theoretical treatment of geostatistics and is systematically oriented toward a practical exhibition of the problems and proposed solutions. The writing is fluid and intended to involve the reader. The book is the fruit of more than 35 cumulative years of applied research by the authors, a professor at the University of Chile and a researcher at Mines ParisTech, carried out in collaboration with the Chilean company Codelco since the late 1990s. Despite focusing on copper porphyry deposits, the generalization of the methods presented to the entire mining industry is straightforward. The broad range of problems addressed, including generally neglected disciplines such as geotechnics, geometallurgy and sampling, and their practical presentation make this book unique and usable by a very wide audience – students, researchers, geologists, engineers, geotechnicians and metallurgists.

The papers in this volume provide a comprehensive account of the current methods and work in geostatistics, including recent theoretical developments and applications. Topics featured include: stochastic simulations, space-time modelling, and Bayesian framework.

The ideas in this book have been developed over the past three or four years while I was working at the Institute of Geological Sciences and later for Golder Associates. During that time all of the geological modelling and resource estimation studies I participated in had data that were non-ideal in one respect or another (or just plain 'dirty'): the standard ways of handling the data with kriging or with simpler parametric methods gave reason able results, but always there were nagging doubts and some lack of confidence because of the corners that had to be cut in generat ing a model. The bimodal distribution that was assumed to be 'close enough' to normal; the pattern of rich and poor zones that was not quite a trend yet made the data very non-stationary; and the many plotted variograms that would not fit any standard model variogram: these all contributed to the feeling that there should be something that statistics could say about the cases where hardly any assumptions could be made about the properties ofthe parent population.