My answer may be out of the socpe of your question, since iI am not sure I undertood well your objective.
In a study where we wanted to assess the types of trajectory of change in the management of agricultural parcels during more than 5 decades within the parcel population of a mountain landscape (Mottet et al 2006) we built a rough comprehensive indicator of the "type" of agroecosystem and its management (culivated crop with ploughing, semi-natural grassland used (i) for haymaking and pasture and (ii) for pasture only) and bulit a vector of the annual type of ecosystem and management ,
relplace my previous uncomplete answer which was sent by accident - sorry
My answer may be out of the socpe of your question, since iI am not sure I undertood well your objective.
In a study where we wanted to assess the types of trajectory of change in the management of agricultural parcels during more than 5 decades within the parcel population of a mountain landscape (Mottet et al 2006) we built a rough comprehensive indicator of the "type" of agroecosystem and its management (culivated crop with ploughing, semi-natural grassland used (i) for haymaking and pasture and (ii) for pasture only) and bulit for each parcel a vector of type of ecosystem and management occupying it for each year of the period considered. ,We could then apply a two-step multivariate analysis method (factorisation+ automatic hierarchical clustering) for identifying types of trajectory of changes of the parcels (parcel 'cultural history").
Another solution for assessing trajectories of change, when several criteria are requested for charactérising the temporal states of the dynamic system of concern is to decribe the temporal change in the system on a periodic basis and use specific methods for spatio-temporal data analysis. We applied such a method to the assessment of trajectories of change of individual family-farms within a regional population (Rueff et al. 2012; Ryschawy et al., 2013). In that cases we used the Doledec and Chessel method. I can send you pdf reprints of these publicationsf if you would wish it.
All the data analyses were done with the R software, which is a free online software.
Hoping this can be helful for you
Best regards and good progress in your research study
Annick Gibon
Article A Preliminary Assessment of the Local Diversity of Family Fa...
Article Agricultural land-use change and its drivers in mountain lan...
Conference Paper Understanding how farmers last over the long term : a typolo...
Thank you very much for your inputs. I will go through your paper for more understanding. I will let you know for any assistance from you, If needed. Thanks