Interpolating Topographic and Climatic Data for Spatial Analysis of Environment in China

Climate is a dominant environmental factor in building ecosystem structure and driving biotic dynamics with topographic dependence on spatial distribution. This paper demonstrates the application of interpolation technique to describe spatial climate distribution. A digital elevation model (DEM) in resolution of 0.01 degree of latitude and longitude has been developed because the incorporation of spatial dependence on topography is crucial to accuracy of interpolation. Climate data from sparse and discrete network stations were used to fit thin plate smoothing spline surfaces for monthly temperature and precipitation, which enable the regular gridded climate data set to be produced by coupling spline surfaces with underlying DEM. The summary statistics show the interpolation errors of monthly temperature varying between 0.4-0.9 ℃ and monthly precipitation, within 6%~ 11%, much better than the results of other methods. The fine resolution DEM and spatial climate data can be used as baseline of climate c

Interpolating Topographic and Climatic Data for Spatial Analysis of Environment in China