Hi -
I do some spatial modeling over the inter-mountain west of USA and am
wondering about projections.  Most people suggest longlat is not  a proper
'projection' for geostatistics and in fact some packages require a
projection with meters instead of degrees. I believe gstat will compute
great circle distances for longlat data. I have seen some caveats on this,
e.g. "there are no checks that the variogram model can be applied sanely on
a sphere"<http://r-sig-geo.2731867.n2.nabble.com/Kriging-and-datum-shifts-td7583666.html>
.
The standard projection for a domain my size/geographic location seems to
be the conus albers from USGS (epsg:5070) which is an equal area projection
so my question is: Wouldn't it make more sense to do spatial modeling with
a true distance projection, i.e. longlat, than an equal area projection for
which distances are skewed? What makes the variogram model potentially
inappropriate on a sphere (overlooking the fact that the earth isn't really
a sphere)?
I appreciate your help understanding this.
Thanks
Dominik

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