Clipping an Interpolated Area

[MatthewNicholson]

Hello,

I am currently attempting to interpolate some molecular data across a space of the Celtic Sea.  Various parts of the rectangular output are on the land.  Is there a way to clip the output to prevent GIS from interpolating land areas.  The land is represented in the form of a shape file.
Many thanks for any help!!

Cheers,
Matt

[EricKrause]

It depends on whether you are creating rasters or geostatistical layers.

If you're creating rasters, you can use the Mask environmental setting when running the geoprocessing tool (starting at ArcGIS 10.1, all Geostatistical Analyst tools that output a raster will honor Mask).  You can also use the Clip tool if you already have the rasters or do not have ArcGIS 10.1 or later.

If you're creating geostatistical layers, they cannot be clipped directly.  But you can use something called Dataframe Clipping to make the layer transparent over land (which, visually, will look just like a clip).  To see an example of this with geostatistical layers, see steps 18-21 at the bottom of the first Geostatistical Analyst tutorial.