Kriging of Eocene sand channels from depth-averaged overburden pH, Jewett lignite surface mine, east-central Texas

Journal Article · Fri Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1995 · Environmental amp Engineering Geoscience

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2113/gseegeosci.I.2.173· OSTI ID:136685

Altis, S; Tilford, N R ^[1]

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1. Texas A and M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)

Ordinary point kriging was used to map twenty-six vertically-averaged soil and oxidized overburden acidity values for a future mine block at the Jewett lignite mine, east-central Texas. The pH data were collected as part of a geochemical overburden characterization study to be used in post-mining reclamation decision-making. The authors used kriging, and its estimation standard error, to test the completeness of their data set and to indicate areas of need for additional closely spaced sampling. Because pH can be readily measured in the field, they chose it as the parameter of interest in the kriging. In general pH increased with depth; however, a more exciting result was that the trend and geometry of a major paleo-channel could be mapped from pH values because of the relatively higher acidity of the sand in the channel. Kriged maps were compared with manually-contoured and inverse-distance weighting interpolated maps, and found to be more easily interpretable. The kriging performed better because it allows of anisotropies in the data to be naturally included in the interpolation. Prior to the kriging, the data were studied to validate the assumptions involved in the modeling. The data are clean, well-behaved and statistically homogeneous, and the interpolation was successful even with sparse data. The knowledge of the location and morphology of the paleochannels is essential for the engineering aspects of the mining, and is useful in reclamation decision-making.

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• OSTI ID: 136685
• Journal Information: Environmental amp Engineering Geoscience, Journal Name: Environmental amp Engineering Geoscience Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 1; ISSN XZ456G
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
ACID NEUTRALIZING CAPACITY
COAL MINES
GEOCHEMISTRY
LAND RECLAMATION
OVERBURDEN
PH VALUE
PLANNING
SOIL CHEMISTRY
TEXAS