StatGeo, June 17-20, 2014, Olomouc, Czech Republic

StatGeo, the international Workshop on Practical Statistical Issues in Geological Applications, offers a practical forum of discussion for people concerned with the statistical treatment, modelling and interpolation of compositional data in geochemical applications, particularly focused on geochemical exploration and mapping. A special emphasis will be devoted to attract students and young researchers to specific problems of statistical analysis in geosciences. The workshop will mainly consist of a series of invited lectures on the problems of geochemical mapping, followed by discussions on each of the compositional topics raised. The goal of the workshop is to attract interest to each of these specific topics and to provide enough time space for panel discussions.

StatGeo will touch a wide variety of problems and oppportunities that the log-ratio approach to compositional data analysis brings to regional geochemistry contexts. Particularly, the main specific feature of the workshop will be discussions for concrete problem solving and team building. Complementarily, also contributions of participants from the fields of interest of the workshop are warmly welcome, specially if they portray unsolved problems. All participants should be preliminary familiar with the log-ratio approach to compositional data analysis (otherwise, an introductory course will be provided).

Conference program

StatGeo, the international Workshop on Practical Statistical Issues in Geological Applications, aims at gathering together scientists from geochemistry, chemometrics and compositional data analysis to discuss on the current challenges and opportunities brought forward by the application of logratio statistical methods to regional geochemistry as well as attract students to this particular field of geosciences.

The workshop is intended as a forum of discussion of open problems and promising tools, more than the typical set of independent talks on final wrapped-up solutions. During three days, the workshop will be organized in topical sessions, each about a typical problem of regional geochemistry. Sessions will start with an invited keynote lecture focusing on a particular problem, followed by comments or contributions of a panel of scientists, both from statistical-mathematical and geoscience backgrounds. Immediately after, the typical break refreshments will be offered in the same room, and informal discussion and on-the-fly training will be opened. As much discussion/training time as presentation time is allocated.

The scientific program of the StatGeo workshop will focus on the following topics-problems:

• analysing and representing individual components and bivariate relations attending to the effects of the closure;
• univariate and multivariate mapping in regional geochemistry, in order to obtain jointly valid component maps;
• extracting factors of variablity from multilayer compositional data, i.e. data sets where the same variables have been analysed at the same locations but from different layers or with different analytical techniques targetting different chemical/mineral bonds;
• background vs. anomaly detection; meaning and treatment of outliers in this context;
• analytical issues: lab intercomparability, missing values, rounded values and zeroes; what do they mean geochemically and how can they be analysed.

Participants of the StatGeo workshop should be aware of the logratio approach to compositional data analysis. No advanced expertise is required, though: introductory course will be offered if sufficiently demanded on the first day of the workshop.

Conference venue

The workshop will held in the Hotel Flora, a modern ten-storey hotel with an international clientele situated in a quiet part of the city of Olomouc next to the city parks where the Flora Olomouc flower shows are held. The hotel is just a ten-minute walk from the historical heart of the city and within reach of tram or rail transport.