Spatial Interpolation

Examples of interpolation results

Click on the two pictures below to see a simulation of the changing chemical concentration.

Concentration of chemicals in the soil (Mitas et al. 1998)

Chemical concentration in a water (Mitas et al. 1998)

The examples shown above are the result of careful and sophisticated interpolations from a wide range of potential applications.

After looking into sampling and the analysis of spatial dependencies in the previous chapter, we now proceed to the "heart" of this lesson – spatial interpolations. Many of these techniques do not count to the easiest application in spatial analysis. That is why we deliberately restrict ourselves to a brief overview of the methods. The following techniques of interpolation are discussed:

• Distance-based interpolation
• Geostatistic methods

The latter being the subject of advanced courses and is not discussed in detail. What actually are spatial "interpolations"? This refers to the computation of unknown values based on neighboring known values.