[R-sig-Geo] Spatial autocorrelation on a sphere

[Dan Bebber]

In the case where data are sampled on a sphere (e.g. the Earth) and the spatial locations are denoted by latitude and longitude, is there a way of generating a spatial autocorrelation structure that can derive Euclidean distances from these coordinates?

I imagine that corSpher(form = ~ latitude + longitude, nugget = TRUE) would work over short distances, but would deteriorate as distance increased.

One potential solution might be to derive distances from the spDistsN1 function in package sp, or the rdist.earth function in package fields, or the distm(x, y, fun=distHaversine) in package geosphere, and somehow to supply these to corSpher.

Very grateful for any suggestions or comments.

Dan Bebber