The Performance of Spatial Interpolation Methods and Choropleth Maps to Estimate Properties at Points: a Soil Survey Case Study

A study was designed to compare the performance of six spatial interpolation methods to estimate soil properties at unvisited points. These methods were global mean, moving average, nearest neighbour, inverse squared distance, Laplacian smoothing splines and ordinary point kriging. These methods were also applied in combination with a choropleth map (soil map) by stratifying the area. The soil properties estimated were thickness of A1 horizon, maximum areic mass of phosphate adsorbed by soil, mean highest water table and mean lowest water table. The performance of the methods was measured by estimating the spatial means of the squared and absolute error (quality criteria not conditional on the sample of test points) by a stratified simple random sample of test points. The mean squared error was very large in proportion to the spatial variation over the total area for all methods and properties. Differences between methods were small. In general, no statistically significant stratification or weighting effects were found. The effect of weighting plus stratification was usually not significant either. Overall, weighting with inverse squared distance was as satisfactory as weighting by ordinary point kriging. However, the latter was superior near data points. Also, when combined with soil map stratification, kriging was more reliable in the sense that it estimated all properties well. Estimates obtained using the means of six soil map units were better, although not significantly, than those obtained from unstratified kriging and as good as kriging within three map units.