Journal of Integrative Agriculture

2013, 12(9): 1673-1683 September 2013

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Spatial Interpolation of Soil Texture Using Compositional Kriging and

Regression Kriging with Consideration of the Characteristics of Compositional
Data and Environment Variables

ZHANG Shi-wen1, 2, SHEN Chong-yang1, CHEN Xiao-yang2, YE Hui-chun1, HUANG Yuan-fang1 and LAI
Shuang3

1 China Agricultural University/Key Laboratory of Arable Land Conservation (North China), Minstry of Agriculture/Key Laboratory of
Agricultural Land Quality Monitoring, Ministry of Land and Resources, Beijing 100193, P.R.China
2 School of Earth and Environment, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, P.R.China

3 Afforestation Management Office, Sichuan Forestry Department, Chengdu 610081, P.R.China

Abstract
The spatial interpolation for soil texture does not necessarily satisfy the constant sum and nonnegativity constraints.
Meanwhile, although numeric and categorical variables have been used as auxiliary variables to improve prediction
accuracy of soil attributes such as soil organic matter, they (especially the categorical variables) are rarely used in spatial
prediction of soil texture. The objective of our study was to comparing the performance of the methods for spatial
prediction of soil texture with consideration of the characteristics of compositional data and auxiliary variables. These
methods include the ordinary kriging with the symmetry logratio transform, regression kriging with the symmetry logratio
transform, and compositional kriging (CK) approaches. The root mean squared error (RMSE), the relative improvement
value of RMSE and Aitchison’s distance (DA) were all utilized to assess the accuracy of prediction and the mean squared
deviation ratio was used to evaluate the goodness of fit of the theoretical estimate of error. The results showed that the
prediction methods utilized in this paper could enable interpolation results of soil texture to satisfy the constant sum and
nonnegativity constraints. Prediction accuracy and model fitting effect of the CK approach were better, suggesting that
the CK method was more appropriate for predicting soil texture. The CK method is directly interpolated on soil texture,
which ensures that it is optimal unbiased estimator. If the environment variables are appropriately selected as auxiliary
variables, spatial variability of soil texture can be predicted reasonably and accordingly the predicted results will be
satisfied.

Key words: compositional kriging, auxiliary variables, regression kriging, symmetry logratio transform

has been studied extensively in literature (Gobin et al.

INTRODUCTION
Soil texture is a kind of compositional data which is
very common in the earth sciences (Walvoort and de
Gruijter 2001). The spatial prediction of soil texture
2001; Meul and Meirvenne 2003; Zhao et al. 2009; Ließ
et al. 2012). However, the spatial interpolation for soil
texture does not necessarily satisfy the constant sum
and nonnegativity constraints. Incorporating informa-
tion about soil variability and increasing the resolution

Received 16 October, 2012 Accepted 4 March, 2013

ZHANG Shi-wen, Tel: +86-554-6668430, E-mail: mamin1190@126.com; Correspondence HUANG Yuan-fang, Tel: +86-10-62732963, Fax: +86-10-62733596, E-mail:
yfhuang@china.com

© 2013, CAAS. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/S2095-3119(13)60395-0
1674
of soil data in simulation models have often shown to
improve model predictions (McBratney et al. 1992;
Lathrop et al. 1995; Lilburne and Webb 2002; Chaplot
2005). The spatial variability of soil texture is not an
independent process and is usually correlated with other
environment variables. The studies on using numeric
variables and categorical variables to improve the pre-
diction accuracy of soil attributes such as soil organic
matter have been reported. For example, Hengl et al.
(2004) proposed a methodological framework for spa-
tial prediction of organic matter, pH in topsoil and top-
soil thickness by comparing regression kriging with
ordinary kriging and plain regression. Chai et al. (2008)
compared the performance of the empirical best linear
unbiased predictor (E-BLUP) with residual maximum
likelihood (REML) with that of regression kriging for
predicting soil organic matter (SOM) in the presence
of different external drifts. Zhang et al. (2011) exam-
ined whether inclusion of categorical variables can im-
prove the accuracy of SOM prediction through sys-
tematical analyses of variability. However, the reports
about uses of numeric variables and categorical vari-
ables to improve the prediction accuracy of soil texture
are very few. The objective of the paper is to find an
appropriate interpolation method for soil texture pre-
diction by testing various spatial prediction methods
which take the interpolation requirements of compo-
sitional data and auxiliary information into account.
Compositional kriging (CK), firstly described and ap-
plied in de Gruijter et al. (1997), was introduced as a
straightforward extension of ordinary kriging that com-
plies with these constraints. Also, CK appears to be a
promising alternative for indicator kriging, because or-
der relation is implicitly taken into account in the CK
(Isaaks and Srivastava 1989; Walvoort and de Gruijter
2001; Tan et al. 2009; Zhang et al. 2011). Taking the
numeric variables (e.g., SOM, elevation and bulk
density) and categorical variables (e.g., land use types,
soil types and parent material) as auxiliary variable, soil
texture was predicted using ordinary kriging with the
symmetry logratio transform (OK-SLR), regression
kriging with the symmetry logratio transform (RK-SLR)
and CK methods. The root mean squared errors
(RMSE), the relative improvement (RI) values of
RMSE, the mean squared deviation ratio (MSDR) and
Aitchison’s distance (DA) were adopted to evaluate the
ZHANG Shi-wen et al.
performance of different prediction methods.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Prediction of spatial distribution of soil texture
using RK-SLR and OK-SLR methods
Soil texture is impacted by many environment variables
(e.g., parent material, climate, topography, geology and
hydrology, human activities) during the long-term
geochemical process. This article selected some environ-
ment variables, including the numeric variables (e.g., SOM,
elevation and soil bulk density) and categorical variables
(e.g., land use types, soil types and parent material) to
carry out analysis of variance (ANVON) using SPSS ver.
20.0 software (SPSS Institute 2012). The original data of
soil texture were transformed by SLR approach, and the
predicted results were backtransformed by means of the
antisymmetric logratio transform.
As shown in Table 1, results of one-way ANVON indi-
cated that sandSLR had significant correlations with soil
types, parent material, soil bulk density, elevation and land
use types, siltSLR had significant correlations with soil bulk
density and elevation, and claySLR had significant correla-
tions with soil types, parent material and soil bulk density.
Because these environment variables are significantly re-
lated to different soil particles, they were selected to carry
out multiple linear stepwise regressions by ordinary least
squares. Land use types, soil types and parent material
were taken as categorical variables.
The assignment of categorical variables in the re-
gression was as follows: If a categorical variable in-
cludes n categories, then n-1 dummy variables are
produced. If any one category is taken as a control
group, the other categories would be given 1 or 0. This
assignment method ensures the independence of the
regression for the independent variable. Details about
the assignment method can be referred to previous stud-
ies (SPSS Institute 2012; Zhang et al. 2012). The
dummy variables derived from the soil type, parent ma-
terial and land use type were denoted as “X11, X12,
X13, X14”, “X21, X22, X23,X24, X25, X26”, and
“X31, X32, X33, X34”, respectively.
Fitted equations and related parameters were as
follows:
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Spatial Interpolation of Soil Texture Using Compositional Kriging and Regression Kriging with Consideration 1675

Table 1 Results of analysis of variance (ANVON)

Variables Test of significance2)
Types Classification 1) Parameters SandSLR SiltSLR ClaySLR
SOM (g kg-1) <10 (26), 10-15(44), 15-20 (67), >20 (83) F value 2.19 1.35 0.94
Significance 0.09 0.24 0.46
Soil type Aquic soil (23), cinnamon soil (18), brown soil (72), paddy soil (34), marsh soil (15) F value 6.01 0.96 6.85
Significance 0.00 ** 0.43 0.00 **
Parent material AD (7), DAD (99), SR (12), CR (22), FR (27), LR (10), others (43) F value 2.95 1.38 3.93
Significance 0.00 * 0.21 0.00 **
Soil bulk density (g m-3) <1.36 (54), 1.36-1.38 (55), 1.38-1.40 (59), >1.40 (52) F value 6.64 2.11 3.63
Significance 0.00 ** 0.04 * 0.00 **
Elevation (m) <40 (80), 40-60 (69), 60-80 (18), 80-100 (21), >100 (32) F value 3.72 2.57 1.56
Significance 0.00 * 0.02 * 0.16
Land use type Paddy (10), irrigated (5), dryland (34), vegetable land (128), orchard (43) F value 2.96 1.97 1.00
Significance 0.02 * 0.10 0.41
1)
Number in brackets were number of samples for classification of different types of variables. AD, DAD, SR, CR, FR and LR represent alluvial deposit, dilluvial-alluvial
deposit, siliceous rock, calcareous rocks, Feldspathic rock and leaf rock, respectively.
2)
SandSLR, Silt SLR and ClaySLR represent values of sand, silt and clay transformed by SLR.
*
and **, Correlation is significant at the 0.05 and 0.01 level (2-tailed), respectively.

(1)

Results of regression analyses showed that the
sandSLR content was proportional to aquic soil, while
inversely proportional to paddy and dryland; the siltSLR
content was proportional to bulk density and the claySLR
content was inversely proportional to aquic soil and
brown soil. There was a significant linear relationship
between siltSLR and related auxiliary variables (P<0.05)
and there was an extremely significant linear relation-
ship between sandSLR and claySLR and related auxiliary
variables (P<0.01), which indicated that selected auxil-
iary variables could explain the variability of sandSLR,
slitSLR and claySLR to some extent.
We calculated the regression values and residuals of
sandSLR, siltSLR and claySLR using eq. (1). Semivariogram
models were obtained using the ARCGIS GA function
modules (ESRI 2010) and their models with minimal
residual sum were selected as the best fitting models.
In order to better describe the spatial distribution of soil
texture, anisotropy and trend parameters were obtained
by taking the semivariogram model and the interpola-
tion process into account.
Fig. 1 and Table 2 showed semivariogram models
and corresponding parameters of sandSLR, siltSLR, claySLR,
and their residuals. The nugget to sill ratio C0/(C0+C1),
that shown in Table 2 was designated the degree of
spatial heterogeneity arising from random components
to that the total spatial heterogeneity (Cambardella et al.
1994; Goovaerts 1997). The C0/(C0+C1) ratios of siltSLR,
claySLR and siltSLR residuals were smaller than 50% (Table 2),
demonstrating that their spatial heterogeneities were
mainly caused by systematic variability, while the C0/
(C0+C1) ratios for sandSLR and claySLR residuals were
larger than 50% (Table 2), which demonstrated that
their spatial heterogeneities were mainly caused by ran-
dom components. The spatial correlations of sandSLR,
siltSLR and claySLR were stronger than the corresponding
residuals. The semivariogram in the east (E)-west (W)
direction showed a spatial correlation within a range of
15.84 m, 19.30 km and 13.60 km were larger or equal
to those in the north (N)-south (S) direction for sandSLR,
siltSLR and claySLR, respectively, while ranges of a spatial
correlation in the east (E)-west (W) direction were al-
most all smaller than those of a spatial correlation in the
north (N)-south (S) direction for sandSLR, siltSLR and
claySLR residual, respectively, indicating that spatial vari-
ability of sandSLR, siltSLR and claySLR caused by stochas-
tic factors was stronger than their corresponding
residuals. The C0/(C0+C1) ratio of siltSLR was the small-
est (C0/(C0+C1)=36.36%), and the C0/(C0+C1) ratio of
sandSLR residual was the largest (C0/(C0+C1)=68.29%).
The C0/(C 0+C1) ratios of various types of data were
between 25 and 75%. Therefore, various types of data
had a medium spatial correlation, which is in agree-
ment with the decrease trend in range.

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1676 ZHANG Shi-wen et al.

Fig. 1 Semivariogram model of different soil particles and corresponding parameters. The blue lines were a defining model that provides
the best fit through the point. We need to find a line such that the weighted squared difference between each point and the line is as small
as possible. Binned values were showed as red dots, and were generated by grouping (binning) empirical semivariogram points together using
square cells that are one lag wide. Average points are showed as blue crosses, and are generated by binning empirical semivariogram points
that fall within angular sectors. Binned points show local variation in the values, whereas average values show smooth semivariogram values
variation, sandSLR, siltSLR and claySLR represented values of sand, silt and clay transformed by SLR.

Prediction of spatial distribution of soil texture ward extension of ordinary kriging (OK) that complies
using CK method with these constraints. The CK procedure utilized in
this article is John T version which contains six but-
Compositional kriging is introduced as a straightfor- tons and five edit boxes. For details about CK see

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Spatial Interpolation of Soil Texture Using Compositional Kriging and Regression Kriging with Consideration 1677

Walvoort and de Gruijter (2001). Validation

Table 3 was the model file of CK system, which
contained the variograms models. The CK program
supports the following models: Spherical, Exponential,
Linear with sill, and Gaussian. Nested variograms are
also allowed (up to three structures). Furthermore,
anisotropic structures can be modeled. Note that pa-
rameter α is identical to the range for Spherical and
Linear models. However, for Exponential and Gaussian
models the relationship between the practical range α’
and parameter α is given by α’=3α and
tively (Journel and Huijbregts 1978). The practical range
is that lag distance where the semivariance reaches 95%
of the sill. The C0/(C0+C1) ratios for sand and silt were
between 25 and 75%, while the C0/(C0+C1) ratio for
claySLR was 16.87%, which showed sand and silt had a
medium spatial correlation, and clay had a strong spa-
tial correlation. The C0/(C0+C1) ratios of sand, silt and
clay were smaller than 50% (Table 3), demonstrating
that their spatial heterogeneities were mainly due to sys-
tematic variability. So spatial structure caused by varia-
tion of parent material played a dominant and decisive
role in the total spatial variability, which illustrates that
the variation of soil texture as an important soil physi-
cal property is relative stable in the long-term soil
formation, migration, deposition, decomposition
process, which also was concluded by Zhang et al.
(2011).
We utilized semivariogram parameters showed in Table 3
to predict the sand, silt and clay content of validation
points. Regression values of sandSLR, siltSLR and claySLR
for validation sites were predicted by regression
equations. Predicted values of validation sites were
obtained by adding regression values to residuals for
RK-SLR method. The prediction results for the OK-
SLR and RK-SLR methods were inversely converted
respec- back to original scale. Values of RMSE and MSDR
were showed in Table 4 to evaluate prediction accu-
racy and model fitting effect.
Table 4 showed values of RMSE and MSDR for dif-
ferent spatial prediction methods. The values of RMSE
for the CK method were the smallest for any kind of
soil particles (RMSE values of 1.73, 1.71 and 0.62 for
sand, silt and clay were listed in Table 4, respectively),
demonstrating that the prediction accuracy of CK
method is the highest. The values of MSDR values for
the CK method were closer to 1, which demonstrates
the fitting effects of variograms for the CK method are
better. The value of RMSE for clay was the smallest,
while the value of MSDR for silt was smaller and closer
to 1. Our results are in agreement with the findings
from other studies (Walvoort et al. 2001; Zhang et al.
2011).
Compared to the OK-SLR method, the predicted

Table 2 Semivariogram model of different soil particle composition and corresponding parameters1)
Rang (km)
Variables C0 C1 C0/(C0+C1) (%) phi (°)
Major range Minor range
SandSLR 0.040 0.048 45.45 15.84 15.84 0
SiltSLR 0.012 0.021 36.36 19.30 10.21 19.16
ClaySLR 0.041 0.047 46.59 13.60 13.60 0
SandSLR residual 0.029 0.056 34.12 19.69 18.69 43.06
SiltSLR residual 0.014 0.019 42.42 10.40 20.16 111.45
Clay SLR residual 0.047 0.026 64.38 4.67 7.00 14.06
1)
C 0 is the nugget variance; C1 is the autocorrelated variance; C0/(C0+C1) is the nugget (C0) to sill (C0+C 1) ratio (%); phi (°) is the angle of anisotropy, i.e., the angle
between the major axis of the ellipse and the North, taken in clockwise direction (range: 0-180 degrees). All fitted models used here were spherical model.

Table 3 The model file of compositional kriging system

Str C0 C1 Model smj1 smn1 smj smn phi (°) Max Min
1 60.93 70.76 2 27.2 20.01 81.6 60.02 12.30 30 4
1 40.59 61.99 2 21.81 15.77 65.43 47.3 9.49 30 4
1 0.42 2.07 2 4.30 1.44 12.9 4.32 83.32 30 4

Str, number of variogram structures; Model, 1=Spherical, 2=Exponential, 3=Linear with sill, 4=Gaussian; smj1, parameter α of structure 1 in major direction; smn1,
parameter α of structure 1 in minor direction; smj, the major search radius; smn, the minor search radius; Min, the minimum number of conditioning points; Max, the
maximum number of conditioning points within the search ellipse.

© 2013, CAAS. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1678 ZHANG Shi-wen et al.

Table 4 Validation results for different spatial predicted methods

CK RK-SLR OK-SLR
Validation paraments
Sand Silt Clay Sand Silt Clay Sand Silt Clay
RMSE 1.74 1.71 0.62 2.83 1.72 0.63 3.25 3.16 0.67
MSDR 6.38 3.54 8.88 7.89 5.75 66.69 13.18 3.97 35.04

accuracy of the RK-SLR and CK methods are improved. also be found in other studies (Chai et al. 2008; Zhang
Specifically, the relative improvement values of RMSE et al. 2012).
of sand, silt and clay for the CK approach reached to
46.64, 45.89 and 7.83%, while the relative improve-
CONCLUSION
ment values of RMSE of sand, silt and clay for RK-
SLR method reached to 13.06, 45.75 and 6.17% (Fig. 2).
The predicted methods utilized in this article enable the
Aitchison’s distance (D A) was computed between
interpolation results to satisfy the four requirements for
the predicted (x i) and observed z(x i) for all valida-
spatial interpolation of compositional data. By compari-
tion points xi. The scatter plots of DA among differ-
son of RMSE, RI and MSDR of various predicted
ent predicted methods were shown in Fig. 3. A one-
methods, CK was more appropriate for soil texture and
tailed paired difference t test showed that the null
its prediction accuracy and model fitting effect of compo-
hypothesis of no difference between the average DA
for the CK, RK-SLR and OK-SLR methods should
be rejected (pCK-(OK-SLR)=0.042<0.05; pRK-(OK-SLR)=0.048
<0.05); a one-tailed paired difference t test showed
that the null hypothesis of no difference between the
average DA for the CK and RK-SLR methods should
not be rejected (p (RK-SLR)-CK=0.564>0.05). It can be
concluded that predictions obtained with CK and RK-
SLR method were more accurate than those obtained
with the OK-SLR approach, while predictions ob-
tained with the CK method were no significant dif-
ference to those obtained with the RK-SLR method.
The spatial variability of soil texture is independent
process, which is certain correlated with other soil
properties. If their explanations of the auxiliary vari-
ables to various soil particle types were enough, the
prediction results would be satisfied. This result can

Fig. 3 Aitchison’s distance for the OK-SLR vs. RK-SLR and CK

Fig. 2 The relative improvement of accuracy of RK-SLR and CK method and for RK-SLR vs. CK for the study. The solid line is the
based on the reference method OK-SLR. 1:1 line.

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Spatial Interpolation of Soil Texture Using Compositional Kriging and Regression Kriging with Consideration
sitional were better. Values of RMSE, RI and MSDR of
sand for the CK method were 1.73, 46.64% and 6.38,
respectively; values of RMSE, RI and MSDR of silt for
the CK method were 1.71, 45.891% and 3.55,
respectively; values of RMSE, RI and MSDR of clay
for the CK method were 0.62, 7.83% and 8.88,
respectively. Scatter plots of DA showed that predic-
tions obtained with the CK and RK-SLR methods were
more accurate than those obtained with the OK-SLR
approach, while predictions obtained with the CK method
have no significant difference on those obtained with
RK-SLR method. The CK method is directly interpo-
lated with soil texture, which is an unbiased predictor
that minimizes the prediction error variance and that
complies fully with the nonnegativity and constant sum
constraints of compositional data. Obviously, if the
active inequality constraints were known in advance,
the solution of the compositional kriging system would
be rather straightforward. Wismer and Chattergy
(1978) provided an effecient iterative algorithm to find
these active constraints. This algorithm, known as
the method of Theil and van de Panne (1960) starts
with solving the compositional kriging system with all
inequality constraints removed. Its solution is opti-
mal if no inequality constraints are countered.
Otherwise, combinations of the violated inequality
constraints are added iteratively as equality constraints
to the CK system until the optimal solution is obtained.
Fig. 4 The map of the study position, sampling sites and elevation.
1679
The spatial variability of soil texture is not an indepen-
dent process. The introduction of the auxiliary vari-
ables (especially the categorical variables) can explain
better about spatial variability of soil texture and give
satisfied prediction results.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study area
The study was conducted in the plain area of Fangshan
District with an area of 805 km2 (39°30´-39°50´N and 115°41´-
116°14´E), located in the southeast of Beijing City (Fig. 4).
In the study area, the topography slopes slightly from the
southwest to the northeast with the relative elevation vary-
ing between 27 and 390 m. Orchards and arable land are
the main types of land use (Fig. 5). The soil types include
brown soil, cinnamon soil, and fluvo-aquic soil, of which
cinnamon soil and fluvo-aquic soil are dominant, occupy-
ing 85.47% of the total study area.
Data collection and analysis
Soil samples were collected in August 2010. The longi-
tudes and latitudes of each sampling site were recorded
using a global positioning system receiver. For a spe-
cific site, three to five soil samples were collected from
the 0-20 cm layer within the diameter of 10 m surround-
ing a specific sampling location and then mixed
thoroughly. A total of 1.5 kg of soil per sampling site
© 2013, CAAS. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1680
Fig. 5 The map of land use types and parent materials for the study area.
was taken from the mixed samples to perform chemical
analysis based on the quartile method. The samples
were air-dried and ground to pass a 2-mm sieve. SOM
content was determined using the potassium dichro-
mate wet combustion procedure (NSS 1995). Soil par-
ticles were measured using laser grain analyzing equip-
ment (Mastersizer 2000, Malvern Instruments Ltd., UK),
and soil texture was classified based on International
system. Soil bulk density was calculated by dividing
the mass of the oven-dried soil (105°C) by the core
volume. We obtained soil types, types of parent material,
land use types and elevation of sampling points from
maps of soil types, land use types in 2007 and DEM
using the extraction function of ArcGIS10.0 platform.
To validate the performance of the different prediction
methods, the data was randomly split into 220 sites as a
prediction set and 52 sites as a validation set (Fig. 4).
Methods
Transformation for compositional data
As a type of compositional data, soil texture must be trans-
formed before interpolation in order to meet the standard
of nonnegative, the constant sum, minimum error and un-
biased estimate. The transform methods for composition
data mainly include the asymmetry logratio transform
(ALR), the symmetry logratio transform (SLR), the multi-
plicative logratio transform (Aitchison 1986) and the iso-
metric logratio transform (Egozcue 2003). The SLR method
was utilized most widely (Walvoort and de Gruijter 2001;
Tan et al. 2009; Zhang et al. 2011), and this study also
utilized SLR method to transform data of soil texture. The
ZHANG Shi-wen et al.
equation is as follows:
(2)
After performing semivariogram analysis and inter-
polation on the SLR-transformed data, predicted results
are backtransformed via the antisymmetric logratio
transform:
(3)
Where ij(x) is the relative content of the j kind of soil
particle on sampling site , ij(x) is the relative content
transform value of the j kind of particle on sample site i.
The constant i takes the 1/2 of the smallest percentage of
the j kind of soil particle except 0 in the study area. k is
number of components.
Theory and predicted methods
Regression kriging OK, RK and CK methods were uti-
lized to predict the spatial variations of sand, silt and clay
content in this article. RK is a geostatistical method which
has been found to give more precise local predictions than
OK (McBratney et al. 2000; Simbahan et al. 2006). The RK
approach is based on the idea that the deterministic com-
ponent of the target variable is explained by a regression
model, whereas the residuals are assumed to describe the
spatially varying but dependent component (Bishop and
McBratney 2001). In the RK procedure used here the re-
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Spatial Interpolation of Soil Texture Using Compositional Kriging and Regression Kriging with Consideration
gression model is first fitted to the available data. At each
location the residual from the fitted model, e, is calculated. At
a given location, where the covariates are known, an RK
prediction, Z * , is achieved by summing the regression predic-
tion from the covariates, Z *pr , and the ordinary kriging predic-
tion of the residual, e*, interpolated from the observed residu-
als at all sampled locations (Sumfleth and Duttmann 2008):
(4)
More complete descriptions of theory and applications
about RK and OK could be found at Odeh et al. (1995),
McBratney et al. (2000, 2003), Hengl et al. (2004), and
Goovaerts (1999). The RK includes the model “B” (RK-B)
and model “C” (RK-C). The details of the RK-C model
utilized in the paper can be found in Odeh et al. (1995).
Compositional kriging Compositional kriging is a straight-
forward extension of ordinary kriging. Therefore ordinary
kriging can be taken as a starting point for the derivation
of the compositional kriging system (Walvoort and de
Gruijter 2001). The aim of ordinary kriging is to minimize
the prediction error variance subject to the unbiasedness
estimation constraint (Isaaks and Srivastava 1989):
(5)
Where k2 is the estimation variance of the kth compo-
nent of z(xi), Wk is the kth column of weight W, Ck is the
n×n matrix containing the covariances between the data
points for component k, and dk is the vector of dimension
n containing the covariances between the data points and
the prediction point for component k. This constrained
optimization problem can be converted into an uncon-
strained one by adding the unbiasedness constraint with
Lagrange multiplier k to the objective function. The ob-
tained objective function, i.e., the Lagrangian, can be mini-
mized by setting its partial first derivatives with respect to
the weights and the Lagrange multiplier equal to zero
(Walvoort and de Gruijter 2001). This results in the ordi-
nary kriging system:
(6)
Solving this system for Wk and k yields an optimal set of
weights for each component k. The optimal in this case refers
to weights that lead to an unbiased predictor with minimum
prediction error variance (Walvoort and de Gruijter 2001).
However, since the constant sum and nonnegativity
constraints are not guaranteed, these weights are only
optimal for each component k separately and not neces-
sarily for the composition as a whole. Therefore composi-
tional kriging considers all components simultaneously by
minimizing the sum of their prediction error variances, and
by taking the unbiasedness, nonnegativity, and constant
sum constraints into account:
1681
(7)
Where Zk represents the kth column of Z, and tr(·) gives
the trace of its argument. Since this optimization problem
also contains inequality constraints, its solution is more
complicated than that of ordinary kriging. Fortunately, the
concept of active constraints (Wismer and Chattergy 1978)
is very useful in this respect. It can be illustrated by means
of a simple univariate optimization problem:
(8)
Where f (x) is a convex quadratic function of x. At point
x* satisfying minx f (x)=f (x*) subject to x 0.
f’(x*)=0 or f’(x*)>0 and x*=0 (9)
Where f (x)=df(x)/dx. In other words, the following con-
ditions must hold at the minimum:
(10)
Where α * is a Lagrange multiplier. These results are
called the Kuhn-Tucker stationary conditions (Wismer and
Chattergy 1978). The inequality constraint is said to be
active if α <0 and consequently f(x)>0 and x=0. On the
other hand, it is inactive if α=0 and f(x)=0. Hence, active
inequality constraints can be considered as equality
constraints, whereas inactive inequality constraints can
be left out of consideration. Analogously, the Kuhn-Tucker
conditions for the compositional kriging optimization prob-
lem are given by:
(11)
Where k, β, and k are Lagrange multipliers pertaining
to the nonnegativity, the constant sum, and the
unbiasedness constraints, respectively. The resulting set
of equations is the compositional kriging system (Walvoort
and de Gruijter 2001).
Prediction accuracy verification
In order to measure the performance of ordinary kriging
© 2013, CAAS. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1682
with the symmetry logratio transform (OK-SLR), regres-
sion kriging with the symmetry logratio transform (RK-
SLR), and CK, the values of RMSE, MSDR, RI and DA were
calculated. The RMSE indicates the accuracy of prediction,
the smaller RMSE is, and the more accurate the prediction
results are. And the MSDR measures the goodness of fit
of the theoretical estimate of error (Bishop and Lark 2008).
If the correct variogram models are utilized, the MSDR val-
ues should be close to 1 (Lark 2000; Kerry and Oliver 2007;
Chai et al. 2008). The formulas are as follows:
(12)
(13)
Where Z(xi) is the measured value, (xi) is the predicted
value, i2 and n, are the variance and the number of samples
in the validation set, respectively. The relative improve-
ment (RI) values of RMSE, utilized to measure the improve-
ment of the prediction accuracy of x method over the refer-
ence method (OK-SLR), were calculated as Pang et al. (2009)
and Zhang et al. (2012).
(14)
Where RMSEx and RMSEref are the RMSE value of the x
method and the reference method, respectively. Taking
OK-SLR method as the reference method, the RI values of
RMSE for CK and RK-SLR methods were calculated in our
study. DA between the predicted Z(xi) and observed (xi)
was computed for all validation points xi for CK and RK-
SLR versus OK-SLR and RK-SLR vs. CK. It is defined as
Martin-Fernandez et al. (1998).
(15)
Where z(x i) and (x i) are the predicted and observed
values for all validation points xi, respectively, zk(xi) and
(xi) are the predicted and observed values for all validation
points x i with k method, respectively, p is number of
components, which is equal to 3 in our study.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (41071152), the Special Fund for Land
and Resources Scientific Research in the Public Interest,
China (201011006-3), and the Special Fund for Agro-Sci-
entific Research in the Public Interest, China (201103005-
01-01).
ZHANG Shi-wen et al.
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