SPATIAL DATA ANALYSIS Part I

In the Bodmin Tors example above, notice from Figure 14a (p.20) that the clustering structure is actually quite different from that of the Redwood Seedling example in 12a (p.12). Rather than small isolate clumps, there appear to be two large groups of points in the northwest and southwest, separated by a large empty region. Moreover, the points within each group are actually quite uniform with clear subclusters. These observations suggest that the pattern of tors exhibits different structures at different scales. Hence the objective of the present section is to introduce a method of point pattern analysis that takes such scale effects into account, and in fact allows “scale” to become a fundamental variable in the analysis.