A Kriging-based Estimate of the Survey Quality in Biomonitoring of Trace Element Air Pollution

Abstract

The present paper addresses Kriging-based approaches to estimate survey quality, thereby using data on biomonitoring surveys of trace element air pollution. Data were used of a 1995 moss monitoring study in The Netherlands, thereby taking sodium (Na), arsenic (As) and bromium (Br) to illustrate the points made. Survey quality was expressed as the survey signal-to-noise ratio (SSNR), with the survey variance as the signal and the local variance as the noise. The Kriging approaches were regarded in parallel to direct approaches where local variances are determined from multi-fold local sampling.