User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
The three sampling strategies I used in the virtual forest were, Distance-systematic, Distance-random, and Distance-haphazard. The results from the three strategies were similar in that species percentages remained in order, and no strategy sampled any White Pine.
Of the three strategies I used, Distance-systematic had the fastest estimated sampling time at 4hrs 16min, followed by Distance-random at 4hrs 30min. The slowest estimated sampling time belonged to the Distance-haphazard strategy, at 4 hrs 49min.
Species:
Eastern Hemlock(EH), Yellow Birch(YB),Striped Maple(SM), White Pine(WP)
%Error/Strategy:
Systematic: EH:15.06%, YB: 97.33%, SM: 17.14%, WP: 100%
Random: EH: 0.17%, YB 1.56%, SM: 56.01%, WP: 100%
Haphazard: EH: 1.92%, YB: 35.45%, SM: 5.14%, WP: 100%
As can be seen, the accuracy varied between species abundance in the different sampling strategies. As per my virtual forest survey, it can be assumed that species does not affect accuracy. The only consistent % error was with White Pine, which was not sampled in any of the three strategies I used, and therefore had a % error of 100%.
The least accurate of the strategies was Distance-systematic, while the other two were fairly similar in their accuracy.
