Final Technical Report: - Southwest Fisheries Science Center - NOAA

Figure 14. Yearly grids of CCE sea surface temperature. Bottom right plot is a climatology from all samples pooled.
Bottom center panel gives variogram model and search parameter information.
The comparison of interpolation methods showed that there is not a single “best” method
for interpolating our oceanographic observations to produce what we judge to be reasonably
realistic fields of predictor variables. We chose ordinary kriging because this method was least
susceptible to bull’s eyes, edge effects, or other artifacts where data are sparse. The kriged yearly
fields produced for cetacean-habitat modeling capture both mesoscale and larger scale habitat
variability that might influence the distribution of cetaceans. However, it is important to
remember that the yearly field is neither a snapshot nor a mean of oceanographic conditions
during the three- to four-month survey. It is appropriate to use such a field in developing habitat
models using cetacean data collected concurrently with the oceanographic data. When using
these models for prediction, however, it might be better to use fields of oceanographic
parameters derived from ocean-atmosphere models that assimilate ship, buoy, or even remotelysensed
data (e.g., Carton et al. 2000).
47