María Dolores Huete-Morales

Recent advances in capturing spatial data in different periods of time lead to new challenges in predicting missing information from neighboring data, and spatiotemporal kriging is rising as a powerful tool to face this challenge. This research aims to explore the main academic contributions to this statistical technique by performing a bibliometric analysis. From a sample of 953 articles (1990-2022) gathered from the Web of Science database, this study highlights the main contributors on this topic in terms of production and impact (authors, institutions, countries, journals and publishers), and also aims to bring to light the main scientific topics related to spatiotemporal kriging by explore the wording of authors’ keywords, titles and abstracts, and the categories in which the papers analyzed are included. These results lead to an integral view of the state of the art on spatiotemporal kriging, so as to serve as a storefront for researchers who need a comprehensive landscape for this statistical interpolation technique.

Although the numbers are relatively small with respect to non-organic livestock, the importance of organic livestock farms lies in their sustainable coexistence with the natural environment and in the high-quality food products obtained. In this type of production, no artificial chemicals or genetically modified organisms are used, therefore there will be less impact on the environment and, in most cases, native breeds are employed. This paper describes a geostatistical study of organic livestock farms in Andalusia (southern Spain), conducted using information from the 2009 Agricultural Census, by classes of livestock. This region currently records the highest output in Spain for organic livestock farming. The number of farms was fitted according to the univariate generalized Waring distribution, which is presented as a means of analyzing this type of discrete measurement, using agricultural or livestock data. The Waring distribution is used when the frequency of occurrence of a phenomenon is very low and allows one to divide the variance. The most important outcome of this study is the finding that livestock data variability is mainly due to external factors such as the proneness component of the variance.

The aim of this paper is to identify the main factors that determine territorial differences between two large neighbouring provinces (Granada and Almería) that each occupy both sides of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in southern Spain. Our analysis produced a prediction model for riverside woodland cover, one of the variables that most strongly characterizes the differences between the two provinces. A general linear model was constructed for spatial analysis (spherical model with REML estimation), taking into account the location of the municipalities (longitude, latitude, and elevation) and other factors related to soil type, vegetation, or woodland cover. Interpolation of spatial data was performed by ordinary kriging. The predictions obtained over a grid of locations enabled patterns in each region to be derived and visualised, with very clear results. The pattern of riverside woodland cover is highly differentiated between the two provinces, despite their presenting adjoining areas.

Environmental quality is a characteristic inherent to all ecosystems, and so knowledge of the indicators that define it, within those of sustainability as a whole, is of vital importance. In particular, environmental analysis of any area should include information on air quality together with data on water, soil, natural resources, and human beings. The distribution of individuals and their impact on the environment varies enormously among countries. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the environmental impact recorded in 27 countries of the European Union, taking into account variables relating to the volume of pollutants emitted to the atmosphere, freshwater abstraction, and the population density in each country. A hierarchical cluster analysis has allowed us to establish groups of countries of similar behavior within the considered variables. Countries with anomalous records (above the EU average) have been detected.

Many variables can be analysed to characterize the past and present employment status of women. Among these parameters are indicators of part-time employment; these, together with factors such as age, nationality and education/training, are of crucial importance in obtaining a proper understanding of this question. The following hypotheses are addressed in this study: that women are more likely than men to be in part-time employment; that this likelihood is even greater for married women; that the higher the level of educational qualifications, the lower the probability of being in part-time employment; and that the female immigrant population is less likely than non-immigrant women to be in part-time employment (however, nationality has no such influence among the male population). Women are much more likely than men to be employed part-time, and it is often said that women prefer this type of contract in order to reconcile family life with their work. However, we show that this is not true. The probability of part-time employment among married women wishing to work longer hours is much higher than that for men. Accordingly, part-time employment contracts for women would appear to be more an imposition by society than a personal preference.

The introduction of environmental taxation policies had reached most European countries by the late 1990s. The pricing of activities considered harmful to the environment has given rise to the design of various economic instruments, such as environmental taxes, aimed at promoting environmental responsibility and at enabling the Kyoto Protocol targets to be met, and at the same time generating a marked increase in tax revenues. The aim of this article is to examine whether convergence in environmental taxation has taken place among 27 EU countries, doing so by analyzing time series and applying unit root tests. Our findings show there has been no such convergence, overall, despite the existence of groups of countries with common patterns of behavior.

Modelling the number of olive groves in Spanish municipalities