Dear Members,

I am trying to incorporate spatial effects into a linear model of
temperature dependent carbon emissions in the US. I have a 10 x 10 km grid
that encompasses those areas of the conterminous US which utilize more than
65 % natural gas for heating. You can see the grid in the image here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4030944/spatial_domain_choice.png overlaid on a map
of the Census 2000 population. I extracted these cells from a parent grid
that covered the entire country. As can be seen, there are a lot of
"missing" regions within the boundaries and the extents are extremely
irregularly shaped. From what I understand this will create spatial islands
and a large number of grid cells with no neighbours. I am also concerned
with the spatial configuration of this domain since I have two constraints
for choosing a) the linear model developed should be applicable to any
region of the country after controlling for percentage of gas use and b) the
domain should be representative of all climate zones i.e the latitudinal
temperature gradient. I would like to have a fairly large sample size and am
debating whether to forego that and discard the portions in the extremities.
I would really appreciate help on how best to approach this problem.

Regards,

-- 
advait godbole

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