Spatial Interpolation

Control points are points with known valuesit is best if there is good coverage of control points (how often does this happen?) Assumptions:
1. The surface of the Z variable is continuous 2. The Z variable is spatially dependent

Types of Spatial Interpolation

Global vs. Local
The difference is the number of control points used

Exact vs. Inexact

How control point values are used and re-estimated

Deterministic vs. Stochastic

Assessment of prediction errors (with estimated variances)

Types of Spatial Interpolation

Global vs. Local
The difference is the number of control points used

Exact vs. Inexact

How control point values are used and re-estimated

Deterministic vs. Stochastic

Assessment of prediction errors (with estimated variances)

Simple Spatial Interpolation Techniques

Local Methods: The z value of an unknown point location is estimated from known local point neighbor locations Interpolation procedures are used when we have discontinuous datasets and we want (or need) to process them into spatially continuous datasets

Simple Deterministic Spatial Interpolation Techniques

Usually used to derive field datasets for further processing:
Inverse Distance Weighted Spatial Average Proximity polygons Local Spatial Averaging Other Methods

Statistical Spatial Interpolation

A process of using locations with known data values to estimate values at other locations.
Global (Statistical) Methods: Use all available data (control points) to perform estimation

A statistical surface is constructed by interpolating unknown values from known values

Spatial Interpolation
Global (Statistical) Methods: The z value of an unknown point location is estimated from all known point data
Polynomial Trend Surface Analysis (Inexact, Deterministic): approximates points with known values with a polynomial equation The equation is used as an interpolator to estimate values at other points Computed by the least squares method and a goodness of fit can be computed for each control point

Zx, y b0 b1x b2 y

Spatial Interpolation
Local Methods
Inverse Distance Weighted (Exact, Deterministic): enforces that the estimated value of a point is influenced more by nearby known points than those farther away
All predicted values are within the range of the maximum and minimum values in the distribution

Spatial Interpolation
Local Methods
Splines (Exact, Deterministic): create a surface that passes through the control points and has the least possible change in slope at all points (minimum curvature surface)

Spatial Interpolation
Local Methods
Kriging (Exact, Stochastic): a geostatistical method for spatial interpolation where the mean is estimated from the best linear unbiased estimator or best linear weighted moving average
Assumes that the spatial variation of an attribute is neither totally random nor totally deterministic (a correlated component, a drift, a random error term)