Development of an R-based Spatial Downscaling Tool to Predict Fine Scale Information from Coarse Scale Satellite Products

Spatial downscaling is often applied to coarse scale satellite products with high temporal resolution for environmental monitoring at a finer scale. An area-to-point regression kriging (ATPRK) algorithm is regarded as effective in that it combines regression modeling and residual correction with area-to-point kriging. However, an open source tool or package for ATPRK has not yet been developed. This paper describes the development and code organization of an R-based spatial downscaling tool, named R4ATPRK, for the implementation of ATPRK. R4ATPRK was developed using the R language and several R packages. A look-up table search and batch processing for computation of ATP kriging weights are employed to improve computational efficiency. An experiment on spatial downscaling of coarse scale land surface temperature products demonstrated that this tool could generate downscaling results in which overall variations in input coarse scale data were preserved and local details were also well captured. If computational efficiency can be further improved, and the tool is extended to include certain advanced procedures, R4ATPRK would be an effective tool for spatial downscaling of coarse scale satellite products.