[R] Nonparametric MANOVA

[Rich Shepard]

   I read a short thread on this topic from last June on stackoverflow.com.
Both Bryan Hanson and Ben Bolker suggested looking for such functions using
the sos package. I did this; the nonpartest function in npmv does not look
to me like it does what I need. Since that thread did not reach a definitive
conclusion (no response by the original poster) I would like to continue my
search here.

   Context: water quality constituent concentrations measured multiple times
from each of several monitoring wells with the latter in two groups: up- and
down-gradient from a site of potential ground water contamination.

   To compare variation within individual monitoring wells with variation
between the wells I'd use the Kruskal-Wallis test. That would also be
appropriate to compare variation within each group (up-gradient and
down-gradient) with variation between the two groups. My understanding of
multiple analysis of variance is this would allow multiple sources of
variability (intra-well and between wells) as explanatory variables for the
response variable of a specified chemical constituent.

   The help page for nonpartest() tells me that it analyzes one-way
multivariate data. Perhaps my understanding of this is poor, but the help
page tells me that nonpartest() formula has a single explanatory variable
and multiple response variables. In the context above, I have a single
response variable (a chemical constituent concentration) and multiple
explanatory variables (at least date, well, and location).

   Please confirm that my understanding of nonpartest() is correct and
suggest an appropriate R protocol to analyze concentration variability
within monitoring wells and between two well locations (up- and
down-gradient).

TIA,

Rich