Bayesian hierarchical models for analysing the spatial distribution of bioclimatic indices

A methodological approach for modelling the spatial distribution of bioclimatic indices is proposed in this paper. The value of the bioclimatic index is modelled with a hierarchical Bayesian model that incorporates both structured and unstructured random effects. Selection of prior distributions is...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Barber, Xavier, Conesa Ortega, David|||0000-0001-5917-2673, Lopez-Quílez, Antonio, Mayoral, Asuncion, Morales, Javier, Barber, Antoni
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/178491
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/178491
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Bioclimatology
geostatistics
parallel computation
spatial prediction
Classificació AMS::62 Statistics::62M Inference from stochastic processes
Classificació AMS::62 Statistics::62P Applications
Classificació AMS::86 Geophysics
Classificació AMS::62 Statistics::62F Parametric inference
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Estadística matemàtica
Descripción
Sumario:A methodological approach for modelling the spatial distribution of bioclimatic indices is proposed in this paper. The value of the bioclimatic index is modelled with a hierarchical Bayesian model that incorporates both structured and unstructured random effects. Selection of prior distributions is also discussed in order to better incorporate any possible prior knowledge about the parameters that could refer to the particular characteristics of bioclimatic indices. MCMC methods and distributed programming are used to obtain an approximation of the posterior distribution of the parameters and also the posterior predictive distribution of the indices. One main outcome of the proposal is the spatial bioclimatic probability distribution of each bioclimatic index, which allows researchers to obtain the probability of each location belonging to different bioclimates. The methodology is evaluated on two indices in the Island of Cyprus.