Iron and manganese are necessary elements for human health，but too much iron or manganese will be harmful to human′s health.It is well known that groundwater was the main source of rural drinking water in china，and iron and manganese contents in groundwater have important effect on drinking water quality.Studies of spatial variability of iron and manganese in groundwater are helpful for the Rural Drinking Water Safety.Mingshan county，between Sichuan Basin and Western Plateau in Sichuan，China，is a typica1 low mountain and hill region.In this region，the Rural Drinking Water Safety was still serious because of dispersed population，inconvenient traffic and information，undeveloped economy，lack of infrastructure and so on.So that，spatial variability of iron and manganese contents in shallow groundwater in Mingshan county were studied by methods of traditional statistics and geostatistics. Using random sampling method，56 sample points were selected in research area.Iron and manganese contents in shallow groundwater were analyzed by atomic absorption spectrometry method.The geostatistical characteristics，spatial trend and azimuth of anisotropic axle of iron and manganese contents were analyzed using the Geostatistical Analyst，ArcGIS 9.0.We created contour maps of iron and manganese contents for the study area using Kriging interpolation. Traditional statistical analysis (descriptive statistics) showed that the average contents of iron and manganese were 027 mg/L and 0.10 mg/L.The coefficient of variation (CV) of iron and manganese contents were 52.12% and 30.34%.The iron content in groundwater was high in general，42.86% of sample points did not reach the drinking water quality criterion (less than 0.2 mg/L) prescribed by EU，25% of sample points did not reach the drinking water quality criterion (less than 0.3 mg/L) prescribed by the Chinese Government and American Government.The highest value of iron content was 3.34 mg/L，which was exceed the national standard to a large extent.In generally，manganese content in groundwater was low，94.64% of sample points reached the drinking water quality criterion (less than 0.1 mg/L) prescribed by the Chinese Government，and 100% of sample points reached the drinking water quality criterion (less than 0.4 mg/L) prescribed by WHO. The geostatistics analysis showed that the trends of iron and manganese contents in groundwater were second order in the east—west and north—south direction，the structure variability of iron and manganese contents was all larger than the random variability，the spatial variability was obvious in northeast—southwest..Spatial distribution characteristics of iron and manganese contents in shallow groundwater in the research area were similar，it decreased gradually from northeast to southwest，but increased near the town of Mingshan county.The highest value region mainly existed in the northeastern.The lowest value region mainly existed in the middle and south.The spatial distribution characteristics of iron and manganese contents in groundwater were closely related to hypsography, parent materials of soil，soil types and human activities.The iron and manganese contents in groundwater in regions of glacial till and fluvioglacial sediments of Quaternary System Pleistocene(Q2fgL) were significantly higher than in regions of purple rock of Cretaceous Jiaguan formation(K2j)，Cretaceous Guankou formation (K2g) and Tertiary Mingshan formation (K12mn).The iron and manganese contents in groundwater in regions of yellow soil significantly higher than in regions of purple soil.