Design‐based properties of the nearest neighbor spatial interpolator and its bootstrap mean squared error estimator

Nearest neighbor spatial interpolation for mapping continuous populations and finite populations of areas or units is approached from a design‐based perspective, that is, populations are fixed, and uncertainty stems from the sampling scheme adopted to select locations. We derive conditions for design‐based pointwise and uniform consistency of the nearest neighbor interpolators. We prove that consistency holds under certain schemes that are widely applied in environmental and forest surveys. Furthermore, we propose a pseudopopulation bootstrap estimator of the root mean squared errors of the interpolated values. Finally, a simulation study is performed to assess the theoretical results.