Geoscience Australia has been deriving raster sediment datasets for the continental Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (AEEZ) using existing marine samples collected by Geoscience Australia and external organisations. Since seabed sediment data are collected at sparsely and unevenly distributed locations, spatial interpolation methods become essential tools for generating spatially continuous information. Previous studies have examined a number of factors that affect the performance of spatial interpolation methods. These factors include sample density, data variation, sampling design, spatial distribution of samples, data quality, correlation of primary and secondary variables, and interaction among some of these factors. Apart from these factors, a spatial reference system used to define sample locations is potentially another factor and is worth investigating.

In this study, we aim to examine the degree to which spatial reference systems can affect the predictive accuracy of spatial interpolation methods in predicting marine environmental variables in the continental AEEZ. Firstly, we reviewed spatial reference systems including geographic coordinate systems and projected coordinate systems/map projections, with particular attention paid to map projection classification, distortion and selection schemes; secondly, we selected eight systems that are suitable for the spatial prediction of marine environmental data in the continental AEEZ. These systems include two geographic coordinate systems (WGS84 and GDA94) and six map projections (Lambert Equal-area Azimuthal, Equidistant Azimuthal, Stereographic Conformal Azimuthal, Albers Equal-Area Conic, Equidistant Conic and Lambert Conformal Conic); thirdly, we applied two most commonly used spatial interpolation methods, i.e. inverse distance squared (IDS) and ordinary kriging (OK) to a marine dataset projected using the eight systems. The accuracy of the methods was assessed using leave-one-out cross validation in terms of their predictive errors and, visualization of prediction maps. The difference in the predictive errors between WGS84 and the map projections were compared using paired Mann-Whitney test for both IDW and OK. The data manipulation and modelling work were implemented in ArcGIS and R.

The result from this study confirms that the little shift caused by the tectonic movement between WGS84 and GDA94 does not affect the accuracy of the spatial interpolation methods examined (IDS and OK). With respect to whether the unit difference in geographical coordinates or distortions introduced by map projections has more effect on the performance of the spatial interpolation methods, the result shows that the accuracies of the spatial interpolation methods in predicting seabed sediment data in the SW region of AEEZ are similar and the differences are considered negligible, both in terms of predictive errors and prediction map visualisations. Among the six map projections, the slightly better prediction performance from Lambert Equal-Area Azimuthal and Equidistant Azimuthal projections for both IDS and OK indicates that Equal-Area and Equidistant projections with Azimuthal surfaces are more suitable than other projections for spatial predictions of seabed sediment data in the SW region of AEEZ.

The outcomes of this study have significant implications for spatial predictions in environmental science. Future spatial prediction work using a data density greater than that in this study may use data based on WGS84 directly and may not have to project the data using certain spatial reference systems. The findings are applicable to spatial predictions of both marine and terrestrial environmental variables.