ABSTRACT
This chapter broadens the discussion on point-pattern analysis by introducing various technical aspects concerning the estimation of summary statistics. In Section 3.1, we present methods for estimating the various summary statistics introduced earlier in the book. Estimation, in particular, must explicitly account for the problem of edge correction, a topic briey touched upon in Section 2.3.2.5. Here, we provide the theoretical foundation of the currently available methods and compile the different approaches into a common framework. In Section 3.2, we present methods for analyzing replicate patterns by combining results into one “master” result. This task is closely associated with the initial development of estimators, since combining the results of replicate patterns comes down to dening rules of how to estimate master summary statistics for replicate plots. Section 3.3 deals with the independent superposition of point processes. If the summary statistics of two-point processes are known, we can calculate, under certain conditions, the summary statistics that result from the independent superposition of the two-point processes. This operation considerably expands the range of point-process models we can use and allows us to describe observed patterns in a more realistic way.
