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The virtual forest tutorial allowed one to test three different sampling strategies: systematic sampling, random sampling and haphazard sampling. It was determined that the fastest estimated sampling time was the systematic sampling technique at 12 hours and 35 minutes. Following this was the random and haphazard techniques, with 12 hours and 43 minutes and 13 hours and 9 minutes, respectively.
The most common tree species were Eastern Hemlock and Red Maple. Systematic sampling was the most accurate of the three techniques when obtaining samples of Eastern Hemlock and Red Maple, with 17.4% and 14.4% error respectively. Random sampling of Eastern Hemlock resulted in a 20.6% error and haphazard resulted in 44.7% error. The sampling of Red Maple by the haphazard technique had 14.4% error, tying for the most accurate with systematic sampling. The least accurate technique was random sampling with 26.4% error.
The least common tree species were Striped Maple and White Pine. Of the three sampling techniques, random sampling was the most accurate. The percent error was 18.9% for Striped Maple and 50% for White Pine. Though random sampling was the most accurate overall, haphazard was more accurate when sampling striped maple with 14.3% error. Systematic was the least accurate with 128.6% error. White pine had the lowest density out of the tree species and the percent error was the greatest. The least accurate technique was haphazard with 185.7% error. Systematic sampling had 138.1% error.
Systematic sampling was the most accurate technique with the most common species. Alternatively, the most accurate technique with the least common species was random sampling. As the abundance of species decreased, the percent error increased; the exception to this was Red Maple.
