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Timescape: A Simple Spatiotemporal Interpolation Tool
Version 1
: Received: 23 December 2021 / Approved: 24 December 2021 / Online: 24 December 2021 (11:16:17 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Ciolfi, M.; Chiocchini, F.; Pace, R.; Russo, G.; Lauteri, M. Timescape: A Novel Spatiotemporal Modeling Tool. Earth 2022, 3, 259-286. Ciolfi, M.; Chiocchini, F.; Pace, R.; Russo, G.; Lauteri, M. Timescape: A Novel Spatiotemporal Modeling Tool. Earth 2022, 3, 259-286.
Abstract
We developed a novel approach in the field of spatiotemporal modelling, based on the spatialisation of time: the Timescape algorithm. It is especially aimed at sparsely distributed datasets in ecological research, whose spatial and temporal variability is strongly entangled. The algorithm is based on the definition of a spatiotemporal distance that incorporates a causality constraint and that is capable of accommodating the seasonal behaviour of the modelled variable as well. The actual modelling is conducted exploiting any established spatial interpolation technique, substituting the ordinary spatial distance with our Timescape distance, thus sorting, from the same input set of observations, those causally related to each estimated value at a given site and time. The notion of causality is expressed topologically and it has to be tuned for each particular case. The Timescape algorithm originates from the field of stable isotopes spatial modelling (isoscapes), but in principle it can be used to model any real scalar random field distribution.
Keywords
Spatiotemporal Modelling; Ecological Modelling; Sparse Data; Minkowskian Geometry; Time Series Analysis; Spatial Statistics; Isoscapes
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Ecology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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