Atakrig: An R package for multivariate area-to-area and area-to-point kriging predictions

Abstract

Geostatistical interpolation methods are used in diverse disciplines, such as environmental science, ecology, and hydrology. With the increasing availability of areal spatial data, area-to-area and area-to-point interpolations have great application potential. In this study, based on the variogram deconvolution algorithm proposed by Goovaerts (2008), an open-source area-to-area kriging package atakrig is developed in the R environment. In atakrig, point-scale variogram and cross-variogram can be automatically deconvoluted from spatial areal samples. It provides a general framework for area-to-area and area-to-point ordinary kriging and cokriging. Two applications show that the package works well in river runoff prediction and missing data interpolation for remote sensing aerosol optical depth. The package can be deployed on different operating systems and computer hardware platforms.