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The virtual forest tutorial allowed for the testing of three different sampling strategies: systematic sampling, random sampling and haphazard sampling. It was determined that the fastest sampling time was for systematic sampling at 12 hours, 34 minutes. Followed by haphazard sampling and random sampling, 12 hours and 37 minutes, and 12 hours and 47 minutes, respectively.
The two most common tree species were the Eastern Hemlock and Red Maple. The most accurate of the three techniques for the Eastern Hemlock was systematic sampling with a 1.3% percent error, and the most accurate for the Red Maple was Haphazard with a percent error of 5.4%. The least effective sampling strategy for Eastern Hemlock was Haphazard with a percent error of 45.4%, and the least effective for Red Maple was random sampling with a percent error of 68.4%. Additionally, systematic sampling had a percent error or 26.0% for Red Maple, and random sampling had a percent error or 7.3% for Eastern Hemlock.
The two least common tree species were the White Pine and the Striped Maple. Systematic sampling was the best technique for White Pine and the worst technique for Striped Maple, with percent errors of 4.8% and 174.3%, respectively. The next best sampling strategy for White pine was haphazard sampling with a percent error of 98.8%, followed by random sampling with a percent error of 147.6%. For Striped Maple, the best sampling strategy was random sampling with a percent error of 18.9%, followed by haphazard sampling with a percent error of 66.9%.
Overall, the accuracy of the sampling got worse with lower species abundance as shown with the difference with the two groups above, the most common and least common species. For example with a larger species abundance (the most common species group), the percent error did not go above 68.4%. However, with a smaller species abundance (the least common species group), the percent error went as high as 174.3%. Overall, there is not one sampling strategy that clearly stands out as the most accurate, however, Systematic sampling is the closest, it has the two lowest percent errors for Eastern Hemlock and White Pine. It is hard to tell which is more accurate between random sampling and haphazard sampling as their percent errors are all fairly similar.
