variogram with error = TRUE returns empty plot

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Allie Anderson

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Apr 23, 2026, 5:13:38 PM (3 days ago) Apr 23
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Hi Chris and team,

I'm wondering if you could help me sort out an issue I've been having creating variograms while accounting for spatial error. The main issue is when I try to add error = TRUE into the variogram() function I receive a largely empty plot, whereas when I run without error (default), the variogram plots as normal and makes sense. 

The data I'm running through are Argos data (and some individuals where tags collected both Argos and GPS data). Data are points that occur during a stopover period for individual birds. I notice normal variograms with the default but for most stopover events, I receive empty plots. 

Here's an example for a single bird. It has 336 points that occur over a period of 8 days. The data are newer Argos with the semi major and semi minor ellipse info (I do also have birds that only have LC class codes)

The tlm summary looks like this:
$identity
[1] "STOP_1" $timezone [1] "UTC" $projection [1] "+proj=tpeqd +lat_1=69.4293123249529 +lon_1=-98.2208819681596 +lat_2=53.1062998104261 +lon_2=-82.0369529047841 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs" $`sampling interval (minutes)` [1] 33.48333 $`sampling period (days)` [1] 8.94625 $`longitude range` [1] -108.1709 -106.5596 $`latitude range` [1] 71.47301 72.04295

I can see the ellipses when I plot the data using:
plot(example_tlm, col = "blue", trans = 0) 
It looks like this. Some of the points have very large ellipses on the low quality classes:
example_ellipses.png
When I create the variogram without error 
vario_noerror <- variogram(example_tlm)
plot(vario_noerror)

example_noerror.png
When I plot with error = TRUE using:
vario_error <- variogram(example_tlm, error = TRUE)
plot(vario_error)

example_errortrue.png
Here's the output. Any ideas about what's happening in this case? It looks like there are a couple of fast speed points that could maybe be removed as outliers. 

Any tips greatly appreciated!
Allie
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