A spatiotemporal autoregressive neural network interpolation method for discrete environmental factors

The spatiotemporal interpolation model is necessary for generating continuous distributions for spatiotemporally discrete sampling points. However, there remain challenges in spatiotemporal interpolation due to the complex spatiotemporal effect and the imprecise kernel functions. Here, we proposed a spatiotemporal autoregressive neural network interpolation model (STARNN) that incorporates adaptive spatiotemporal distance quantification and supervised learning. The 10-fold cross-validation modelling on sea surface temperature and coastal nutrients demonstrated that the STARNN model performs better than baseline models and can well depict reasonable spatiotemporal distributions for environmental factors. By proposing two stacked neural networks, the STARNN model can accurately integrate spatial and temporal distances and avoids subjective selection of the kernel function. This study developed a novel interpolation model for processing discrete spatiotemporal points by following the data-driven paradigm, which can offer decision support for simulating the spread of sea temperature anomalies and optimizing the distribution of water quality measurement stations.