Application of Kriging Techniques in Groundwater Hydrology

Many common parameters of groundwater hydrology are found to be "regionalized variables", i.e. they are highly variable but exhibit a certain spatial structure. Geostatistics, which has been developed for the estimation of the grade of ore bodies, is found to be equally applicable to groundwater problems as well.

The basic principles of a geostatistical estimation are outlined, and the usual kriging equations given. The extension of kriging to multivarliate problems is also described. An example is given of the use of these methods for the estimation of the transmissivity using a limited number of observations, both pumping test and specific capacity data. The study was carried out on the chalk aquifer (3000 km²) lying partly in northern France and partly in western Belgium. Both values of transmissivity (72 data points) and specific capacity (235 data points) show a log-normal distribution. All the three methods of cokriging, kriging combined wlth linear regression and kriging with the mean as a function of another variable yielded same results for the transmissivity values estimated.