Application of Moran Eigenvector Maps (MEM) to irregular sampling designs

作     者：Brind'Amour, Anik Mahevas, Stephanie Legendre, Pierre Bellanger, Lise 

作者机构：IFREMER Unite Ecol & Modeles Halieut Rue Ile dYeuBP 21105 F-44311 Nantes 03 France Univ Montreal Dept Sci Biol CP 6128Succursale Ctr Ville Montreal PQ H3C 3J7 Canada Univ Nantes UMR CNRS 6629 Lab Math Jean Leray Nantes France 

出 版 物：《SPATIAL STATISTICS》 (空间统计)

年 卷 期：2018年第26卷

页      面：56-68页

核心收录：

学科分类：0202[经济学-应用经济学] 02[经济学] 020208[经济学-统计学] 07[理学] 0708[理学-地球物理学] 0816[工学-测绘科学与技术] 0714[理学-统计学（可授理学、经济学学位）] 0701[理学-数学] 

基　　金：Regional Council of the Pays de la Loire [COSELMAR 2012-09684] 

主　　题：Autocorrelation Irregular sampling Sampling schemes Spatial analyses Statistical methods 

摘      要：Moran s eigenvectors maps (MEM) are attractive mathematical objects as they are fairly simple to calculate and can be used in most studies of spatially-explicit data. There is, however, an aspect of MEM analysis that still requires some investigation: the effect of irregular sampling on their modeling performance. This study investigates empirically the behavior of MEMs under different irregularity schemes. It is focusing on simulated scenarios representing sampling designs frequently encountered in ecology. We advocate that MEMs can be computed and correctly used with data coming from irregularly designed sampling surveys, given some precautions. We suggest that when the sampling sites are equally spaced but do not cover the entire study area, the MEMs can be computed directly on the coordinates of the sampling sites without any important loss of information. Whereas, when the phenomenon of interest is tackled using randomly stratified sampling designs, the MEMs should be computed on a reconstructed space of regular sampling sites followed by removal of the missing sites, before analysis. This solution of rebuilding a (regular) sampling space guarantees to capture the underlying process under study, improves the modeling results and relaxes the impact of the choice of the weighting matrix on the computation of MEMs. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.