Testing for spatial isotropy under general designs

Abstract

Spatial modeling is typically composed of a specification of a mean function and a model for the correlation structure. A common assumption on the spatial correlation is that it is isotropic. This means that the correlation between any two observations depends only on the distance between those sites and not on their relative orientation. The assumption of isotropy is often made due to a simpler interpretation of correlation behavior and to an easier estimation problem under an assumed isotropy. The assumption of isotropy, however, can have serious deleterious effects when not appropriate. In this paper we formulate a test of isotropy for spatial observations located according to a general class of stochastic designs. Distribution theory of our test statistic is derived and we carry out extensive simulations which verify the efficacy of our approach. We apply our methodology to a data set on longleaf pine trees from an oldgrowth forest in the southern United States.