Median Polish Kriging and Sequential Gaussian Simulation for the Spatial Analysis of Source Rock Data

Abstract

In this technical note, a geostatistical model was applied to explore the spatial distribution of source rock data in terms of total organic carbon weight concentration. The median polish kriging method was used to approximate the “row and column effect” in the generated array data, in order for the ordinary kriging methodology to be applied by means of the residuals. Moreover, the sequential Gaussian simulation was employed to quantify the uncertainty of the estimates. The modified Box–Cox technique was applied to normalize the residuals and a cross-validation analysis was performed to evaluate the efficiency of the method. A map of the spatial distribution of total organic carbon weight concentration was constructed along with the 5% and 95% confidence intervals. This work encourages the use of the median polish kriging method for similar applications.