Multivariate nonparametric trend assessment with environmental applications

A major goal of environmental monitoring is to determine whether the environment is improving or deteriorating. Questions about the health of the environment are usually questions about trends in environmental indicators, typically a number of chemical, physical, and biological variables. Because multiple indicators are required to characterize any but the most simple environment, the problem is statistically a multivariate problem. In this work, methods for analyzing multivariate environmental trends are presented and illustrated on 17 years of approximately monthly observations on 5 water quality variables from southwestern Virginia, USA. Multivariate methods can also be applied to analyze correlated univariate data collected on a seasonal or monthly basis. A variety of methods from the literature are discussed. A unified approach is described based on a general class of correlation measures to construct a general framework for the nonparametric analysis of multivariate trends.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Statistics

Department dc:contributor.department

Statistics

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1992

Author dc:creator

• Rheem, Sungsue

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Smith, Eric P.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Myers, Raymond
• Holtzman, Golde
• Lentner, Marvin
• Coakley, Clint W.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

etd-10242005-174004

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/40145