ON UNBIASED BACKTRANSFORM OF LOGNORMAL KRIGING ESTIMATES

Abstract

Lognormal kriging is an estimation technique that was devised for handling highly skewed data distributions. This technique takes advantage of a logarithmic transformation that reduces the data variance. However, backtransformed lognormal kriging estimates are biased because the nonbias term is totally dependent on a semivariogram model. This paper proposes a new approach for backtransforming lognormal kriging estimates that not only presents none of the problems reported in the literature but also reproduces the sample histogram and, consequently, the sample mean.