User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
The virtual forest sampling tutorial really helped me learn the techniques of sampling. The fastest estimate time was the area haphazard method at 2 hrs and 43 minutes. The percent errors are as follows:
Haphazard- Common
Red maple- 4%
White Oak – 7%
Haphazard- Rare
Black Tupelo- 70%
Downy Juneberry- 76%
Random Systematic- Common
Red Maple- 8%
White Oak- 8%
Random Systematic- Rare
Hawthorn- 76%
Black Cherry- 96%
Random Sys- Common
Red Maple- 4%
White Oak- 20%
Random Sys- Rare
White Ash- 68%
Basswood- 66%
The accuracy changed greatly with species abundance and most with the rare species. Accuracy seemed to decrease. Random/Systematic produced data closest to the actual values, although not as fast in time, but the percent error values were lower in haphazard sampling.
