Math Geosci (2009) 41: 487–489 DOI 10.1007/s11004-009-9221-9 BOOK REVIEW R. Webster, M.A. Oliver: Geostatistics for Environmental Scientists Second Edition. Wiley, Chichester (2007). Print ISBN: 9780470028582, Online ISBN: 9780470517277, $130USD Gerard B.M. Heuvelink Published online: 20 March 2009 © The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com This book is a revised and updated edition of the successful first edition that was pub- lished in 2001. A superficial comparison with the 2001 edition shows that the book is longer (315 instead of 271 pages) and the front cover is restyled with a modern, more colorful jacket. Does the face-lift also apply to what’s inside? The answer is a partial yes. The additional pages include a new chapter on spatial stochastic simulation. This is an important addition, because it was the main subject missing from the first edi- tion. Further comparison with the first edition also shows that the variogram chapters have been reordered, though their content remains essentially unchanged. More at- tention is paid to kriging in presence of a trend, and a section on residual maximum likelihood estimation is included, which was completely absent from the first edition. Otherwise, the second edition is much like the first, with only marginal modifications and references to recent work added. Indeed, it would be odd if a book on introduc- tory geostatistics would change very much in six years’ time. The book has 12 chapters, in which the standard order of presenting geostatis- tics is followed. The introduction explains the need for geostatistics, gives a historic account, and outlines the rest of the book. Chapter 2 presents basic statistics and Chapter 3 discusses deterministic interpolation techniques. Deterministic methods cannot represent the complex natural variation and do not produce a measure of in- terpolation error. These limitations motivate the use of a stochastic representation of reality. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 introduce regionalized variable theory, the experimental variogram, variogram modeling, and the reliability of the experimental variogram. A useful extension here would have been a discussion on uncertainty quantification G.B.M. Heuvelink ( ) Environmental Sciences Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, Netherlands e-mail: gerard.heuvelink@wur.nl