A Novel Adaptive Algorithm for Spatial Interpolation
Jiaogen Zhou1,2, Xu Chen2, Dongmei You2, Daoyou Huang1*
1
Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, The Chinese Academy of Science, Changsha, China
2
Center of Information Technology in Agriculture, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai, China
*Corresponding author, e-mail: dyhuang@isa.ac.cn
Abstract—The spatial distributions of soil heavy metals are not
continuous with landscape heterogeneity. In the context, the
existing spatial interpolation methods cannot obtain accurate
estimation of contents of soil heavy metals in unknown locations.
In this paper, we present a novel adaptive algorithm for spatial
interpolation of soil heavy metals under spatial heterogeneity
background. The core idea of our algorithm is to impose a
constraint on spatial interpolation, which spatial estimation of
soil heavy metals is processed in the context of spatial
homogeneity. Our algorithm consists of extracting land patches,
polygon merging, minimum unit partitioning and interpolation
operator. The experimental results on real soil data show that the
performance of our algorithm is more reliable than ordinary
kriging method.
Keywords-adaptive algorithm; spatial Interpolation; heavy
metals; Geographic Information System (GIS)
I. INTRODUCTION
How to accurately and effectively describe spatial non-
point-source distributions of heavy metal contents with discrete
data of monitoring locations has been interesting and attractive
in the research field of soil and ecology. There are many works
involved in the hot issue.
Classical geo-statistical theory proposed in sixties-seventies
of last century is considered as a good method to solve the
problem [1-4]. The core idea of geo-statistical method is
regional variance, which hypothesizes that soil properties meet
spatial autocorrelation in a certain scale [5-6]. In the context of
spatial autocorrelation, estimating of the soil properties of non-
monitored locations with soil data from known and monitored
points is reasonable [7-8]. The works in many published
documents shows that regional variance theory can
appropriately describe spatial variability and distribution of soil
heavy metals. Moreover, a series of spatial estimation methods
based on regional variance theory, such as ordinary kriging,
universal kriging, Co-kriging, regression kriging and trend
surface, prove to obtain good estimation of soil heavy metal
contents of unknown locations with data of known and discrete
locations [5,7-9]. In fact, there is an Underlying assumption
imposed on above-mentioned approaches, which good and
accurate interpolation of unknown locations can be achieved
only if the data used to interpolate, from known locations
satisfies spatial homogeneity.
In fact, due to the effect of outer factors such as land use
types, cropping regimes and human activities, the contents of
soil heavy metals show significantly spatial variability in a
middle or large scale, especially in suburbs. This means that
Supported by National water pollution control and management
technology major projects (No.2009ZX07212-001-05), Hunan science and
technology major projects (No.2009FJ1005) Shanghai Natural Science
Foundation (No.11ZR1432700), Development Fund of Shanghai Academy of
Agricultural (No. 2010-11˅
978-1-61284-848-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
the distribution of soil heavy metal contents don not follow the
spatial autocorrelation since their spatial variability is with
increase of the research scale. So, good and reasonable
performance of interpolating unknown locations can be
obtained when using known data of spatial homogeneity in a
small scale, but the spatial distribution heterogeneity of heavy
metal contents can lead to underestimation or overestimation of
unknown locations by above-mentioned methods in a middle or
large scale.
Soil -landscape model theory on soil formation gives a full
consideration to the impact of environmental factors and land-
scape on soil properties, and seeks to make spatial prediction of
soil properties of unknown location through soil properties and
landscape environmental factors. Zhu et al and Mcbratney et
al early used soil- landscape model theory to guide soil
survey works and digital soil mapping, and made a series
of results [10-13]. This method has been extensively applied to
soil landscape classification and perdition of soil thickness, soil
humus, organic matter and salt contents [14-18], but there are
yet few research works about estimation of heavy
metals contents using soil-landscape model. There is still a big
challenge to difficultly quantify the relationship soil heavy
metal contents and external environment factors [19].
In this paper, we integrate the advantages of both regional
variance theory and soil landscape model method, and propose
a novel adaptive interpolation algorithm for soil heavy metal.
The core idea in our algorithm is to impose a spatial
homogeneity constraint on interpolation, which all known
points to participate in estimation of an unknown point is of
spatial homogeneity.
The following of the paper is organized as follows. Section
2 describes a collaborative change assumption for our
algorithm. Section 3 introduces the construction and implem-
entation of the adaptive algorithm. Section 4 presents
experimental results on real data, and finally, Section 5 makes
a conclusion of the paper.
II. THE PROPOSED COLLABORATIVE CHANGE ASSUMPTION
As above mentioned, traditional interpolation method make
an assumption that soil properties are subject to spatial
autocorrelation, so they can be described by discrete and sparse
data. However, automatically determining the spatial auto-
correlation range of soil properties is very difficult with
current interpolation methods, and then it is easy to under-
estimate or overestimate the value of an unknown location in
the region with significantly spatial variance of the distribution
of soil properties. For example, for two neighboring arable
plots, one of cultivating food crops, while the other one of
growing vegetables. Very naturally, water and fertilizer
investment in the plot of planting vegetables is usually higher
than that of growing food crops. In long run, if cropping
systems and fertilizer management practices remain unchanged,
the contents of soil properties, such as organic matter, total
nitrogen, and heavy metals, and so on in vegetable plot are
significant higher than ones in food crop plot. To analyze the
spatial distribution of soil properties in the two plots, sampling
and analysis may be on the terraces, and then using some inter-
potation method to predict their spatial distribution. On
using traditional interpolation method, an interesting pheno-
menon appears in the adjacent zones between two plots ˈ
which relative high contents of soil properties are close to food
crop zones while relative low contents of soil properties tend
to be near to vegetable zones. This is contrary to the actual
situation. In this paper, we consider this phenomenon as a
crossing boundary interpolation problem. The further
discussion of the question is as follows.
Figure 1. Description of crossing boundary interpolation and spatial
homogeneity-based interpoaltion
Fig. 1 indicates a soil area consisting of A ~H eight soil
blocks of different classes. The content distributions of heavy
metals of different soil classes are to meet the similarity in the
same class while difference between classes. The soil area is
partitioned into the formation of 8 grids, and then in each grid
unit deployment of a sampling point (black dot Shown as in
Fig. 1 above). Supposing that heavy metal contents in soil units
of C and G over heavy metal pollution level while others not
excessive, we see that the content distributions of heavy metals
in soil units of A and B are relatively homogeneous. As the
content distributions of heavy metals show spatial
heterogeneity, the interpolation results will become unreliable
in the soil area. For example, when interpolating process is
over, heavy metal contents in units of F and H close to the
contaminated unit C will be relatively high, and in contrast,
ones in the unit C adjacent to the non-pollution unit A will
be relatively below. This is what we call crossing boundary
problem.
To some extent, It is worth noting that the distributions of
impacting factor on heavy metal content, such as landscape
features, land use types, cropping regimes meet globally spatial
heterogeneity but locally spatial homogeneity. Since the
contents of heavy metals are directly affected by above-
mentioned outer factors, we can make a reasonable assumption
that the contents of heavy metals also satisfy globally spatial
heterogeneity but locally spatial homogeneity. We call it as
collaborative change assumption. Based the assumption, we
find that the key to solve the crossing border interpolation
question is to determine the locally spatially homogeneity
regions of the distributions of heavy metal contents. Once the
homogeneity regions are determined, interpolation of unknown
locations is constrained to spatially homogeneous backgrounds
to avoid the occurrence of cross-border interpolation.
III. ALGORITHM CONSTRUCTION AND IMPLENMENTION
In order to solve cross-border Interpolation the problem, we
make an assumption that the content distributions of soil heavy
metals keep collaborative change with the outer factors, and
propose a novel adaptive interpolation algorithm based on the
assumption. In our algorithm, the core idea is that any data of
known sites to involve in the interpolation on an unknown site
are exactly of spatial homogeneous background like that of the
unknown site. Generally, the algorithm consists of extraction
land patches, polygon merging, minimum unit partitioning and
interpolation operator.
A. Extracting Spatial Homogeous Units
In our algorithm, identifying the locally spatial homoge-
neous regions of the distribution of heavy metal contents is
very important. In fact, determining of homogenous regions is
the process of classification on the whole soil area. To
obtain accurate results of soil classification, the number of soil
types is needed in advance, but it is difficult to obtain such a
priori knowledge in most cases. So a self-convergence algo-
rithm of spectral clustering [20] is first performed to obtain the
primary number of soil types, and then visual interpretation
operation runs to obtain the soil classes.
B. Polygon Merging
After soil classification, an obtained soil class probably
contains many small and sparse polygons. In fact, this is
harmful to the resulting interpolation operation. So it is
necessary to merge small and sparse polygons to reduce the
computational complexity. We use human-computer interact-
tin model to solve the problem. In the model, users
can determine whether two adjacent polygons are merged or
not in terms of their prior knowledge. If true, a new soil class is
found. Very naturally, although the classification results are
directly influenced by prior knowledge of users, the more
users' prior knowledge is of abundance, the more accurate
results.
C. Minimum Inperpoaltion Unit Partitioning
Minimum unit partitioning is a process that the whole soil
area is divided into regular grids through a certain scale and the
resulting grid units is called as minimum interpolation unit.
The gridding size is better than sampling one. If a grid unit building areas (shown as in Fig. 2). In comparison,
contains a sampling point, it is named as participating unit, and interpolation in our method is more reliable than that of
if not called as interpolating unit. Additionally, a new field is ordinary kriging.
added to all grid units. For participating units, the field values
equal to the heavy metal contents of corresponding points,
while for interpolation units, let they null. Finally, the field
values of participating units are used to estimate ones of
interpolation units.

D. Interpolation Operator
Interpolation on the heavy metal contents in the unknown
sites is based on the classification of soil unit classes. This
means that soil unit class map is used to classify sampling
points. For any points are located in the same soil class, they
will be set in the same category. Giving a soil class t and an
unknown location xt 0 , its estimation value Z ( xt 0 ) satisfies:

Z ( xt 0 ) Z ( xt )  r ( xt 0 ), (1)

1 n(t )
Z ( xt ) ¦ Z ( xtj ),
n(t ) i 1
(2)
n(t )
r ( xt 0 ) ¦O
j 1
tj
( Z ( xtj )  Z ( x t )). (3)
(a)

Here, QW  stands for the number of samplers located in

soil class, Z ( xt ) for the mean of samplers, Z ( xtj ) for the value
of the sampler x tj , r ( xt 0 ) for the residual, and finally O ij for
weight coefficient.
IV. EXPERIMENT

A. Data Preparation
In this paper, all algorithms are encoded using vb.net
language, and run in our independent platform for secondary
development of GIS. The real experimental data consists of
heavy metal Cd contents of 1520 sampling points collected in
the three years of 2006-2008 in Daxing district of Beijing city,
China. Two remote images of 30m resolution TM and Beijing-
1 satellite image of 100m resolution are merged with ENVI
software, and then a spectral clustering method is performed on
the merged image to obtain the primary number of soil types.
(b)
B. Comparation of Our Algorithm with Kriging
Figure 2. Comparation of our algprithm with kriging methd
Comparasion of our algorithm with ordinary kriging
method is conducted with 1520 heavy metal Cd data from
Daxing district of Beijing. Due to all sampling points collected V. CONCLUSION
from arable land, but not residential and building areas, so In this paper, we have introduced and discussed the
interpolation in residential and building areas is not reasonable crossing boundary interpolation problem. A novel interpolation
and reliable. Apparently, ordinary kriging method cannot solve algorithm based on a collaborative change assumption has been
the cross-border interpolation question. Apparently, the proposed to solve the question. The core idea of the algorithm
conduction of ordinary kriging results in interpolation over the consists of extracting spatially homogenous soil classes,
entire Daxing area, including the residential and building areas merging polygon, minimum interpolation unit partitioning and
with no monitoring data (shown as in Fig. 2). It is very possible interpolation operator. The experiment on real data shows that
to over-estimation or under-estimate their Cd contents in our algorithm is more reliable than ordinary kriging method.
absence of monitoring data from residential and building areas. The experimental comparisons of our algorithm with other
However, the implementation of our algorithm results in interpolation methods will be conducted in next step.
interpolation only over arable areas and not residential and
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are very grateful to those who collected and
analyzed the data of soil heavy metal Cd used in the paper.
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