The role of spatial dependence on the functional clustering based on the smoothing splines regression

The use of quality indicators of water is of crucial importance to identify risks to the environment, society and human health. The European Community Water Framework Directive establishes guidelines for the classification of all water bodies across Europe and chemical and biological indicators were used to this scope. In particular, the chlorophyll type A is a shared indicator of trophic status and a monitoring activities may be useful to explain its spatial distribution and to discover local dangerous behaviours (for example the anoxic events). Despite of evaluation based on an “average” value over the hole period, we investigate and develop univariate functional clustering models to investigate the spatiotemporal structure of chlorophyll type A concentrations on the Adriatic Sea and to define appropriate groups. In addition, the importance of the spatial dependence was evaluated by comparing two different methodology. The data for the classification analysis is formed by glob-colours data during the period 2002-2012 (monthly values, 11 calendar years) provided by the ACRI server (http://hermes.acri.fr/) using satellite data source combining information of MERIS, Seaways and MODIS optical sensors.