Spatial Relationships Between Two Georeferenced Variables

With Applications in R

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Ronny Vallejos Felipe Osorio
• •

Moreno Bevilacqua

Spatial Relationships
Between Two Georeferenced
Variables
With Applications in R

123
Ronny Vallejos Felipe Osorio
Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics
Federico Santa María Technical University Federico Santa María Technical University
Valparaíso, Chile Valparaíso, Chile

Moreno Bevilacqua
Faculty of Engineering and Sciences
Universidad Adolfo Ibañez
Viña del Mar, Chile

ISBN 978-3-030-56680-7 ISBN 978-3-030-56681-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56681-4
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my lovely wife and son,
Carmen and Ronny Javier.
Ronny Vallejos

To my children Vicente and Florencia,

for their love.
Felipe Osorio

To Gianni and Agostina.

Moreno Bevilacqua
Preface

In this book we cover a wide range of topics that currently are available only as a
material included in many research papers. The material we cover is related to 35
years of research in spatial statistics and image processing. Our approach includes
an exposition of the techniques keeping the mathematical and statistical background
at a minimum so that the technical aspects are placed in an appendix in order to
facilitate the readability. Each chapter contains a section with applications and R
computations where real datasets in different contexts (Fisheries Research, Forest
Sciences, and Agricultural Sciences) are analyzed.
We trust that the book will be of interest to those who are familiar with spatial
statistics and to scientific researchers whose work involves the analysis of geosta-
tistical data. For the first group, we recommend a fast reading of Chap. 1 and then the
chapters of interest. For the second group, the preliminaries given in Chap. 1
are recommended as a prerequisite, especially because of the language and notation
used further in the book. The interdependence of the chapters is depicted below,
where arrow lines indicate prerequisites.
Extensive effort was invested in the composition of the reference list for each
chapter, which should guide readers to a wealth of available materials. Although
our reference lists are extensive, many important papers that do not fit our pre-
sentation have been omitted. Other omissions and discrepancies are inevitable. We
apologize for their occurrence.
Many colleagues, students, and friends have been of great help to our work in
this book in several ways: by having discussions that improve our understanding of
specific subjects; by doing research with us in a number of collaborative projects;
by providing constructive criticism on earlier versions of the manuscript; and by
supporting us with enthusiasm to finish this project. In particular, we would like to
thank Aaron Ellison, Daniel Griffith, Andrew Rukhin, Wilfredo Palma, Manuel
Galea, Emilio Porcu, Pedro Gajardo, Jonathan Acosta, Silvia Ojeda, Javier Pérez,
Francisco Alfaro, Rogelio Arancibia, Carlos Schwarzenberg, Angelo Gárate, and
Macarena O’Ryan.

vii
viii Preface

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 1
Chapter 4

Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Ronny Vallejos’ research was supported by Fondecyt grant 1120048, by the

Advanced Center for Electrical and Electronics Engineering, FB-0008 and by
internal grants at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile. Felipe Osorio’s
work was supported by Fondecyt grant 1140580. Moreno Bevilacqua’s research
was partially supported by Fondecyt grant 1160280, and by Millennium Science
Initiative of the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism, grant Millenium
Nucleus Center for the Discovery of Structures in Complex Data, Chile.
During the period in which the book was written Ronny Vallejos and Felipe
Osorio were in the Departamento de Matemática at Universidad Técnica Federico
Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile. Moreno Bevilacqua was in the Departamento de
Estadística at Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile.
We wish to end this preface by thanking our families, friends, and others who
helped make us what we are today and thereby contributed to this book. In par-
ticular, we would like to thank Eva Hiripi of Springer for her constant support.

Valparaíso, Chile Ronny Vallejos

May 2020 Felipe Osorio
Moreno Bevilacqua
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Motivating Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 The Pinus Radiata Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 The Murray Smelter Site Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.3 Similarity Between Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Objective of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Layout of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Preliminaries and Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5.1 Spatial Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5.2 Intrinsic Stationary Processes and the Variogram . . . . . . . . 10
1.5.3 Estimation of the Variogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5.4 Kriging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.5.5 The Cross-Variogram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.5.6 Image Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.6 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2 The Modified t Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.2 The Modified t-Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3 Estimation of the Effective Sample Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Applications and R Computations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4.1 Application 1: Murray Smelter Site Revisited . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.2 Application 2: Modified t-Test Between Images . . . . . . . . 35
2.5 A Permutation Test Under Spatial Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.5.1 Application 3: Permutation t-Test Between Images . . . . . . 39

ix
x Contents

2.6 Assessing Correlation Between One Process and Several

Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.6.1 Application 4: Pinus Radiata Dataset Revisited . . . . . . . . . 42
2.7 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3 A Parametric Test Based on Maximum Likelihood . . . . . . . . . . . .. 47
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 47
3.1.1 Parametric Bivariate Covariance Models . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 47
3.2 A Parametric Test Based on ML Under Increasing Domain
Asymptotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 53
3.3 A Parametric Test Based on ML Under Fixed Domain
Asymptotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 56
3.4 Examples with the R Package GeoModels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 58
3.4.1 An Example of Test of Independence Using a Separable
Matérn model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 58
3.4.2 An Example of Test for Assessing the Correlation
Using a Nonseparable Matérn Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.5 Application to the Pinus Radiata Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.6 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4 Tjøstheim’s Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.1 Measures of Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.2 Definition of the Measure and Its Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.3 Applications and R Computations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.3.1 The R Function cor.spatial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.3.2 Application 1: Murray Smelter Site Revisited . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.3.3 Application 2: Flammability of Carbon Nanotubes . . . . . . . 74
4.4 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5 The Codispersion Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2 The Codispersion Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2.1 Relationship Between Codispersion and Correlation . . . . . . 80
5.2.2 Differentiating Correlation and Spatial Association . . . . . . 81
5.3 Codispersion for Spatial Autoregressive Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.4 Asymptotic Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.5 Hypothesis Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.6 Numerical Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.6.1 Simulation of Spatial Autoregressive Models . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.6.2 Simulation of Spatial Moving Average Models . . . . . . . . . 96
5.6.3 Coverage Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Contents xi

5.7 The Codispersion Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5.7.1 The Map for Data Defined on a General Lattice . . . . . . . . 99
5.7.2 The Map for Data Defined on a Regular Grid . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.8 Applications and R Computations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.8.1 The R Function codisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.8.2 Application 1: Flammability of Carbon Nanotubes
Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.8.3 Application 2: Comovement Between Time Series . . . . . . . 104
5.8.4 Application 3: Codispersion Maps for Images . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.8.5 Computational Time Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.9 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
6 A Nonparametric Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.2 Linear Smoothers and Kernel Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.3 A Nadaraya-Watson Codispersion Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.4 Asymptotic Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
6.5 Selection of the Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.5.1 Bandwidth Selection for the Semivariogram . . . . . . . . . . . 120
6.5.2 Bandwidth Selection for the Cross-Variogram . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.6 Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.7 R Computations and Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.7.1 The R Function Codisp.Kern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.7.2 Application: The Camg Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.8 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7 Association for More Than Two Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7.2 The Codispersion Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7.3 Asymptotic Results and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7.4 Spectral Band Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
7.5 Applications and R Computations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.6 Final Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
7.7 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
8 Spatial Association Between Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8.2 The Structural Similarity Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
8.3 Some Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
8.3.1 The CQ Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
8.3.2 The CQmax Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
8.3.3 The CSIM Coefficient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
xii Contents

8.4 Numerical Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

8.4.1 Performance of the Directional Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
8.4.2 Performance of the Coefficients Under Distortions . . . . . . . 157
8.5 Applications and R Computations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.5.1 Application: Stochastic Resonance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.6 Problems for the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Appendix A: Proofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Appendix B: Effective Sample Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Appendix C: Solutions to Selected Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 Motivating Examples

The types of spatial data we describe in the following examples have been widely
discussed in Cressie (1993) and Schabenberger and Gotway (2005) in the context
of a single realization of a stochastic sequence. Since the book addresses spatial
association between two stochastic sequences, we consider some basic assumptions
that do not vary throughout the book. For example, we denote the two random
sequences as X (s) and Y (s) for s ∈ D ⊂ R2 , and the available information is the
observations X (s1 ), . . . , X (sn ) and Y (s1 ), . . . , Y (sn ). That is, both variables have
been measured at the same locations in space.

1.1.1 The Pinus Radiata Dataset

Pinus radiata, which is one of the most widely planted species in Chile, is planted in
a wide array of soil types and regional climates. Two important measures of plan-
tation development are dominant tree height and basal area. Research shows that
these measures are correlated with the regional climate and local growing condi-
tions (see Snowdon 2001). The study site is located in the Escuadrón sector, south
of Concepción, in the southern portion of Chile (36◦ 54 S, 73◦ 54 O) and has an
area of 1244.43 hectares. In addition to mature stands, there is also interest in areas
that contain young (i.e., four years old) stands of Pinus radiata. These areas have an
average density of 1600 trees per hectare. The basal area and dominant tree height in
the year of the plantation’s establishment (1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996) were used to
represent stand attributes. These three variables were obtained from 200 m2 circular
sample plots and point-plant sample plots. For the latter, four quadrants were estab-
lished around the sample point, and the four closest trees in each quadrant (16 trees
in total) were then selected and measured. The samples were located systematically
using a mean distance of 150 m between samples. The total number of plots available

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

R. Vallejos et al., Spatial Relationships Between Two Georeferenced Variables,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56681-4_1
2 1 Introduction

5913000
5912000
5911000
5910000
5909000
5908000

665000 666000 667000 668000 669000 670000

Fig. 1.1 Locations where the samples were taken

Basal area Height

5913000

5913000

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6
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5912000

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5911000

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y

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666000 667000 668000 669000 670000 666000 667000 668000 669000 670000

x x

(a) (b)

Fig. 1.2 a Bilinear interpolation of the three basal areas; b Bilinear interpolation of the three heights

for this study was 468 (Fig. 1.1). Figure 1.2 shows a simple bilinear interpolation and
the corresponding contours for the two variables. The original georeferenced data do
not enable estimation of the sample correlation coefficient because it is challenging
to train the human eye to capture two-dimensional patterns.
The objective of analyzing these data is to construct a suitable measure that takes
into account the spatial association between the two variables. One could be tempted
to compute the Pearson correlation coefficient for the two sequences by considering
these variables to be two simple columns. Then, the construction of a scatterplot could
1.1 Motivating Examples 3

Fig. 1.3 Height versus Basal

area (468 observations)

8
7
6
Height

5
4
3

2 4 6 8 10 12

Basal Area

help to determine whether there is a linear trend between the basal area and height.
It is interesting to emphasize that the human eye can usually be trained to estimate
the value of the correlation coefficient from the information provided by a scatterplot
between the variables of interest. However, when the data have been georeferenced
on two-dimensional space, it is difficult to estimate a reasonable association between
the variables. For the forest variables, a scatterplot between the basal area and height
is displayed in Fig. 1.3, which shows a clear linear correlation between the basal area
and height. The correlation coefficient confirms the linear pattern (0.7021).
Although the exploratory data analysis provides good initial insight into the real
problem, the issue of how to take into account the possible spatial association for
each variable has not yet been addressed. Thus, a primary objective in analyzing these
data is to develop coefficients for the spatial association between two georeferenced
variables that take into account the existing spatial association within and between
the variables.

1.1.2 The Murray Smelter Site Dataset

The dataset consists of soil samples collected in and around the vacant, industrially
contaminated, Murray smelter site (Utah, USA). This area was polluted by airborne
emissions and the disposal of waste slag from the smelting process. A total of 253
locations were included in the study, and soil samples were taken from each location.
Each georeferenced sample point is a pool composite of four closely adjacent soil
samples in which the concentration of the heavy metals arsenic (As) and lead (Pb) was
determined. A detailed description of this dataset can be found in Griffith (2003) and
4 1 Introduction

(a) (b)

Fig. 1.4 Locations of 253 geocoded aggregated surface soil samples collected in a 0.5 square mile
area in Murray, Utah and their measured concentrations of As and Pb. Of these 173 were collected
in a facility Superfund site, and 80 were collected in two of its adjacent residential neighborhoods
located along the western and southern borders of the smelter site. a As measurements; b Pb
measurements

Griffith and Paelinck (2011). For each location, the As and Pb attributes are shown
in Fig. 1.4a, b.
The objective for this data is to assess the spatial association between As and
Pb. Figure 1.4 shows that, in this case, the observations are clearly located in a
nonrectangular grid in two-dimensional space. Again, the goal can be achieved by
quantifying the coefficients of the spatial association or by constructing a suitable
hypothesis test for the Pearson correlation coefficient ρ between As and Pb.
A hypothesis test of the form

H0 : ρ = 0 against H1 : ρ = 0

can be stated under the assumption of normality for both variables (As and Pb). Then,
the test statistic is √
n−2
t =r√ = 11.5548, (1.1)
1 − r2

where n = 253 and r = 0.5892. The p-value associated with the test is 2.2 × 10−16 ;
thus, there is sufficient evidence to reject H0 for a significance α > p.
In the previous analysis, we assumed that the correlation between the variables
is constant, i.e., cor[X (s), Y (s)] = ρ, for all s ∈ D. However, as we will see in the
following chapters, this dataset and several others do not support this restriction.
Instead, they exhibit a clear spatial association between the variables of interest.
1.1 Motivating Examples 5

The objective in analyzing these data is to develop suitable hypothesis testing

methods to assess the significance of the spatial association between two spatial
variables by considering the existing spatial association between them.

1.1.3 Similarity Between Images

With the rapid proliferation of digital imaging, image similarity assessment has
become a fundamental issue in many applications in various fields of knowledge
(Martens and Meesters 1998). Many proposals of indices that capture the similarity
or dissimilarity between two digital images have received attention during the past
decade. One important feature to consider is the capability of some coefficients to
provide a better interpretation of human visual perception than is provided by the
widely used mean square error (MSE) (Wang et al. 2004).
Here, we introduce an example that uses real data to illustrate the dependence of
the spatial association on a particular direction in space, noting that the correlation
coefficient (a crude measure of spatial association between two processes) cannot
account for the directional association between two images. To accomplish this goal,
an original image (Lenna) of size 512 × 512 was taken from the USC-SIPI image
database http://sipi.usc.edu/database/ (See Fig. 1.5a). The image shown in Fig. 1.5a
was processed by Algorithm 4.1 in Vallejos et al. (2015) to transform the original
image into an image with a clear pattern in the direction h = (1, 1). The processed
image is displayed in Fig. 1.5b.
The correlation coefficient between the images shown in Fig. 1.5 is r = 0.6909.
Clearly, the correlation coefficient does not capture the evident pattern observed by
the human eye between the original and transformed images. In fact, the trend in
the off-diagonal of the image in Fig. 1.5b is sufficient to decrease the correlation

(a) (b)

Fig. 1.5 a Original image (Lenna); b Image transformed into the direction h = (1, 1)
6 1 Introduction

coefficient to 0.6909 even though the features of the original image are still present
and detectable by the human eye.
The objective in analyzing these data is to construct image similarity coefficients
that can detect patterns in different directions in space and to appropriately represent
the human visual system.

1.2 Objective of the Book

The aim of this book is to gather the published material that is spread throughout
the literature. The book may be of interest to two types of users. First, researchers
from applied areas, such as agriculture, soil sciences, forest sciences, environmental
sciences, and engineering. For these and other users who possibly are more interested
in the applications, the book is organized in such a way that the mathematical foun-
dations in each chapter can be skipped. Second, for investigators who are interested
in the development of new techniques and methods to assess the significance of the
correlation between two or more spatial processes that are well defined on a two-
dimensional plane, at the end of the book, we include an appendix with the proofs
of the results presented in the book and some mathematical details that support the
expressions and equations that are briefly explained in the main text. Although the
book contains methods that were discovered and proposed approximately thirty years
ago and are very well known to readers working in spatial statistics and geostatistics,
other methods in this book have recently been developed and are not yet available in
a publication like this.

1.3 Layout of the Book

This book is divided into three parts. The first part considers the association between
two random fields from an hypothesis testing perspective (Chaps. 2 and 3). The sec-
ond part is devoted to point estimation coefficients of association. These perspectives
are developed in Chaps. 4–7. The third part considers the spatial association between
two images (Chap. 8). Several applications are presented throughout the book. Each
chapter ends with a set of theoretical and applied exercises. Most of the applied
problems are related to real datasets, and it is expected that the reader will use R
software to solve them.

1.4 Computation

To illustrate the applicability of the methods exposed in this book, each chapter
contains a section on R computations with practical applications. In most of the
examples, we show how R software and the contributed packages SpatialPack and
1.4 Computation 7

GeoModels can be used to implement the techniques described in the corresponding

chapter. The SpatialPack package is freely available from the R website www.r-
project.org and the package GeoModels can be downloaded from the website https://
vmoprojs.github.io/GeoModels-page/.

1.5 Preliminaries and Notation

In this section, we provide the necessary material that will be used in subsequent
chapters. Readers interested in practical applications with real datasets can skip the
rest of this chapter and move ahead.

1.5.1 Spatial Processes

In this section, we introduce the basic notion of stochastic processes. Our goal is
to define the mean, variance, and covariance functions of spatial processes. These
concepts will be used in the subsequent chapters.
A stochastic process is a family or collection of random variables in a probability
space. Let (Ω, F, P) be a probability space, and let D be an arbitrary index set. A
stochastic process is a function

X : (Ω, F, P) × D −→ R,

such that for all s ∈ D, X (w, s) is a random variable. In the sequel, we will denote
a stochastic process as X (s), for s ∈ D, or {X (s) : s ∈ D}.
The above definition enables us to define a variety of processes. For example,
if D = Z, X (s) is a discrete time series. Similarly, a spatial process is a collection
of random variables that are indexed by the set D ⊂ Rd . In the time series case,
the realizations of the process are observations indexed by time, while in the spatial
case, the realizations of the process are regions on the subspace Rd . Additionally,
in the first case, the index set is a totally ordered set; however, in the spatial case, it
is possible to define a partially ordered set. We denote the coordinates of a spatial
process defined on a space of dimension d as s = (s1 , . . . , sd ) .
As an example, consider the process {X (s) : s ∈ Z} defined by the equation

X (s) = A cos(ηs + φ), (1.2)

where A is a random variable independent of φ ∼ U(0, 2π ), and η is a fixed constant.

For the particular case when A ∼ N (0, 1) and η = 1, 1000 observations from process
(1.2) were generated. This realization of process {X (s)} is displayed in Fig. 1.6.