In this practicum we guide you through the fitting of thin-plate spline based deformation models for nonstationary spatial covariance structure using software for

  1. bending energy penalized, weighted least squares fitting available in the EnviroStat package, and

  2. L1 regularized maximum likelihood fitting using a partial warps parameterization of the thin-plate splines.

The R code uses as an example a French 10-day rainfall dataset for 39 sites in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France.

Fig 1. L-R site map

Fig 1. L-R site map

Sites shown in Fig 1 belong to three French departments: Aude, Herault, and Gard, and cover and area from the Mediterranean coast to the southeast mountain range of the Massif Central.