Inventories - Forest inventory
9 important questions on Inventories - Forest inventory
Why do a rectangular plot?
- Easy to determine whether trees are in or out
- in rolling terrain can be oriented along slope to capture most variability
What are the problems with rectangular plots?
How do you deal with plots at the stand boundary?
- Move plot so that if falls within the edge
- edge trees will be under sampled
- bias if stand has lots of edges
- mirror excluded area
- place an auxiliary point at the same distance from the edge in the adjacent stand
- count the trees in the overlapping circle segment twice
- edge trees will be oversampled, leading to bias
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What are the principles of the sixth tree method?
- Plot size is variable, and determined by the distance to the center of the 6th tree
- all 5 nearest trees are measured for their DBH
- also called the distance method
What is the best method for basal area and why?
- Circular plots & angle guage have similar low SD, CV, precision & number of plots needed to get a 10% precision.
- precision (with repetitive measures you get similar values)
- accuracy (how close the value that you obtain is from the " real value"). So is this the real value of basal area?
What is the best method for density and why?
Why do you think that a relatively high number of plots is needed to describe the Oostereng area with 10% precision?
What method approaches the “real” forest values best?
What method is the best compromise in terms of precision and time needed?
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