Calculating coefficient of variation from gstat output to create uncertainty map in R

Question

I was asked by my supervisor to create uncertainty maps of kriging interpolation based on the coefficient of variation ((sd/mean)*100%). I used krige function from gstat package to perform the interpolation.

#interpolation using kriging with external drift
krig1 <- krige(xSO4.2009. ~ easting+lograin.2009., dat1, grid.uk, model=fitvar1)

The output produce the prediction values (var1.pred) and the prediction variances (var1.var).

If I want to create the uncertainty map based on the coefficient of variation (COV), does it mean that I just need to use the prediction values and the variance to calculate COV then map it?

pred<-krig1@data$var1.pred
var<-krig1@data$var1.var
krig1$cov<-(sqrt(var)/mean(pred))*100

Answer 1

Almost. Since the output from kriging is a distribution at every prediction point, you want to divide the sd by the prediction at each point:

 krig1$cov = 100 * sqrt( krig1$var1.var) / krig1$var1.pred

Your code which looks like this:

 krig1$cov = 100 * sqrt( krig1$var1.var) / mean(krig1$var1.pred)

is the variance multiplied by a constant everywhere.