Applications of Regression Kriging and GIS in Detecting the Variation in Leaf Nitrogen and Phosphorus of Spruce in Europe

The leaf nitrogen and phosphorus are considered the major limitations of the photosynthetic process, reflecting the quality and suitability of habitation. The multidimensional factors of ecosystem have been a great barrier to discover the biochemical reaction of plants to their environment. In this research, a novel approach integrated with regression kriging and GIS is applied to explore the pattern of these leaf minerals in relation to spatial variability in climate and landscape (urban radiation and forest shield). Europe was chosen as the study area owing to the availability of spruce leaf data and ancillary grids. The advantage of this method is based on the fact that a map-based orthogonal space and universal kriging improve the accuracy and resolution in mapping the spatial distribution of leaf minerals.