Introduction to Geostatistics In: ICAR Sponsored Winter School on Recent Advances in Fishery Biology Techniques for Biodiversity Evaluation and Conservation, 1-21 December 2018, Kochi.

Geographical Information System (GIS) is a technological tool used to describe and characterize spatially referenced geographical information for the purpose of visualizing, querying and analyzing. The tool enables capturing, storing, analyzing, sharing, displaying and modelling of spatial data maintained with in single database. Making decision based on geography is basics to human thinking and spatial analysis using GIS enable people to combine information from many independent sources and derive entirely new layers of information that are more accurate and reliable in decision making. Spatial analysis involves study of phenomenon that varies with time and space. Geostatistics is a branch of statistics used for analysis of spatial or spatiotemporal data set by applying sophisticated set of various statistical and probabilistic models. Here, we estimate the value of phenomenon from unknown location where no measurements are available with the help of direct measurements derived from known locations. GIS has emerged as powerful tool in the recent years by providing various geospatial solutions in urban planning, mining, natural resource evaluation and management, pollution estimation, risk assessment and large scale mapping thus becoming integral tool in our day today life.