Improving Woody Biomass Estimation Efficiency Using Double Sampling

Forests

David L. Parrott¹  John M. Lhotka¹  Songlin Fei² 

[1] Department of Forestry, University of Kentucky, 210 Thomas Poe Cooper Building, Lexington, KY 40546, USA;Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, 715 West State Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA;

关键词: forest biomass;    inventory design;    prism sampling;    point double sample;   

DOI  :  10.3390/f3020179

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Although double sampling has been shown to be an effective method to estimate timber volume in forest inventories, only a limited body of research has tested the effectiveness of double sampling on forest biomass estimation. From forest biomass inventories collected over 9,683 ha using systematic point sampling, we examined how a double sampling scheme would have affected precision and efficiency in these biomass inventories. Our results indicated that double sample methods would have yielded biomass estimations with similar precision as systematic point sampling when the small sample was ≥20% of the large sample. When the small to large sample time ratio was 3:1, relative efficiency (a combined measure of time and precision) was highest when the small sample was a 30% subsample of the large sample. At a 30% double sample intensity, there was a <3% deviation from the original percent margin of error and almost half the required time. Results suggest that double sampling can be an efficient tool for natural resource managers to estimate forest biomass.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.