What is variography?

Variography is a statistical technique used to quantify the spatial variation of a variable or property of interest, such as soil properties, groundwater levels, or mineral concentrations. It involves analyzing the patterns and relationships of data collected at different spatial locations, and is used to identify the structure and scale of spatial variability.

In variography, the data is divided into pairs of locations, and the differences between the values at these locations are calculated. These differences are then plotted against the separation distance between the locations, and a curve is fitted to the data. The curve indicates the degree of spatial autocorrelation, which is the degree to which the values at two locations are correlated based on their distance from each other.

Variography is an important tool in geostatistics, which is the study of the spatial distribution of natural phenomena. It is used to model and map the spatial distribution of variables of interest, and to estimate the mean and variance of these variables at unsampled locations. This information is useful in a variety of fields, including environmental science, agriculture, geology, and mining, among others.