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Analysing spatial point patterns in R - CSIRO

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82 Dependence of <strong>in</strong>tensity on a covariate<br />

13 Dependence of <strong>in</strong>tensity on a covariate<br />

13.1 Spatial covariates<br />

Often we want to know whether the <strong>in</strong>tensity of <strong>po<strong>in</strong>t</strong>s depends on the values of a covariate. For<br />

example, the tropical ra<strong>in</strong>forest <strong>po<strong>in</strong>t</strong> pattern dataset bei comes with an extra set of covariate<br />

data bei.extra, which conta<strong>in</strong>s a pixel image of terra<strong>in</strong> elevation bei.extra$elev and a pixel<br />

image of terra<strong>in</strong> slope bei.extra$grad. It is of <strong>in</strong>terest to determ<strong>in</strong>e whether the trees prefer<br />

steep or flat terra<strong>in</strong>, and whether they prefer a particular altitude.<br />

> data(bei)<br />

> slope par(mfrow = c(1, 2))<br />

> plot(bei)<br />

> plot(slope)<br />

> par(mfrow = c(1, 1))<br />

bei<br />

slope<br />

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3<br />

13.2 Quadrats determ<strong>in</strong>ed by a covariate<br />

In quadrat count<strong>in</strong>g methods, any choice of quadrats is permissible. From a theoretical view<strong>po<strong>in</strong>t</strong>,<br />

the quadrats do not have to be rectangles of equal area, and could be regions of any<br />

shape.<br />

Quadrat count<strong>in</strong>g is more useful if we choose the quadrats <strong>in</strong> a mean<strong>in</strong>gful way. One way to<br />

do this is to def<strong>in</strong>e the quadrats us<strong>in</strong>g covariate <strong>in</strong>formation.<br />

For the tropical ra<strong>in</strong>forest data bei, it might be useful to split the study region <strong>in</strong>to several<br />

sub-regions accord<strong>in</strong>g to the terra<strong>in</strong> slope.<br />

> data(bei)<br />

> Z b Zcut V plot(V)<br />

> plot(bei, add = TRUE, pch = "+")<br />

Copyright<strong>CSIRO</strong> 2010

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