Statistical Analysis of Land Cover of South Dakota

• Activity Number: 358
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Computing
• Author(s): Mitra Devkota* and Gary Hatfield and Saroj Thapa
• Companies: Shawnee State University and South Dakota State University and South Dakota State University
• Keywords: Land cover ; Autocorrelation ; Ordinary Least Squares ; Simultaneous Autoregressive ; Conditional AUtoregressive ; Significant

Abstract

The present research work focused on how land cover of the 66 counties of South Dakota State had changed over the years 2001-2006. In addition, it studied the existing relationships between developed land cover data, grass land cover data, and forest land cover data with respect to agricultural land cover data. Furthermore, this study explored the relationship of population density with respect to agricultural land cover data in South Dakota. In addition to spatial data analysis, several statistical methods were used for the analysis of the data. The ordinary least squares model with agriculture as a response variable and developed land cover, grass land cover, and forest land cover as independent variables showed that the relationship between them was statistically significant.