Birnbaum-Saunders spatial modelling and diagnostics applied to agricultural engineering data

Applications of statistical models to describe spatial dependence in geo-referenced data are widespread across many disciplines including the environmental sciences. Most of these application assume that the data follow a Gaussian distributions. However, in many of them the normality assumption, and even a more general assumption of symmetry, are not appropriate. In non-spatial applications, where the data are uni-modal and positively skewed, the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution has excelled. This paper proposes a spatial log-linear model based in the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution. Model parameters are estimated using the maximum likelihood method. Local influence diagnostics are derived to assess the sensitivity of the estimators to perturbations in the response variable. As illustration, the proposed model and its diagnostics are used to analyse a real-world agricultural data-set, where the spatial variability of phosphorus concentration in the soil is considered- which is extremely important for agricultural management

Birnbaum-Saunders spatial regression models: Diagnostics and application to chemical data

Geostatistical modelling is widely used to describe data with spatial dependence structure. Such modelling often assumes a Gaussian distribution, an assumption which is frequently violated due to the asymmetric nature of variables in diverse applications. The Birnbaum-Saunders distribution is asymmetrical and has several appealing properties, including theoretical arguments for describing chemical data. This work examines a Birnbaum-Saunders spatial regression model and derives global and local diagnostic methods to assess the influence of atypical observations on the maximum likelihood estimates of its parameters. Modelling and diagnostic methods are then applied to experimental data describing the spatial distribution of magnesium and calcium in the soil in the Parana state of Brazil. This application shows the importance of such a diagnostic analysis in spatial modelling with chemical data