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...

Writing for geologists, mining engineers and metallurgists, Journel (Stanford U.) and Huijbregts (Bureau of Geological Research and Mining, France) aim for a complete handbook. They work from their practical experience gained in mining operations in France to cover geostatistics and mining applications, the theory of regionalized values, structural