Comparative analysis of different spatial interpolation methods applied to monthly rainfall as support for landscape management

Landscape management requires spatially interpolated data, whose outcomes are strictly related to models and geostatistical parameters adopted. This paper aimed to implement and compare different spatial interpolation algorithms, both geostatistical and deterministic, of rainfall data in New Zealand. The spatial interpolation techniques used to produce finer-scale monthly rainfall maps were inverse distance weighting (IDW), ordinary kriging (OK), kriging with external drift (KED), and ordinary cokriging (COK). Their performance was assessed by the cross-validation and visual examination of the produced maps. The results of the cross-validation clearly evidenced the usefulness of kriging in the spatial interpolation of rainfall data, with geostatistical methods outperforming IDW. Results from the application of different algorithms provided some insights in terms of strengths and weaknesses and the applicability of the deterministic and geostatistical methods to monthly rainfall. Based on the RMSE values, the KED showed the highest values only in April, whereas COK was the most accurate interpolator for the other 11 months. By contrast, considering the MAE, the KED showed the highest values in April, May, June and July, while the highest values have been detected for the COK in the other months. According to these results, COK has been identified as the best method for interpolating rainfall distribution in New Zealand for almost all months. Moreover, the cross-validation highlights how the COK was the interpolator with the best least bias and scatter in the cross-validation test, with the smallest errors.