User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
I conducted area-based systematic, random and haphazard sampling methods on the Snyder-Middleswarth Natural Area in the virtual sampling tutorial. Eastern Hemlock (EH) and Sweet Birch (SB) were the most common species found in my simulation, while Striped Maple (SM) and White Pine (WP) were the rarest.
Systematic sampling was performed on 25 quadrats over an estimated duration of 12hrs37mins. The percent errors for EH, SB, SM and WP were 11.47%, 21.70%, 100% and 90.48%, respectively.
Random sampling was performed on 24 quadrats over an estimated duration of 12hrs57mins. The percent errors for EH, SB, SM, and WP were 29.39%, 17.02%, 90.29% and 100%, respectively.
Haphazard, or subjective, sampling was performed on 24 quadrats over an estimated duration of 12hrs40mins. The percent errors for EH, SB, SM and WP were 28.58%, 6.38%, 76% and 197.62%, respectively.
Estimated sampling times were comparable across all three methods; however, systematic sampling had the lowest time and included an additional quadrat, making it the most efficient strategy in this simulation. In terms of accuracy, the margin of error was consistently, and considerably, lower among common tree species (EH & SB) as compared to rare tree species (SM & WP). This finding suggests a decrease in sampling accuracy when dealing with rare tree species.
In this simulation, systematic sampling was the most accurate for two out of the four tree species (EH & WP) and the least accurate for the other two species (SB & SM). Random sampling was never the most accurate method of sampling but it was only the least accurate for EM, by a very small margin (0.81%). Finally, haphazard sampling was the most accurate strategy for two out of the four tree species (SB & SM) and the least accurate method for WP, by a substantial margin (97.62%).
While the results from this simulation are inconclusive, I submit that systematic sampling was the most accurate. It was at par with random sampling for rare tree species, but slightly outperformed it when sampling common tree species. Furthermore, while haphazard sampling yielded the lowest result among the findings (6.38% error for SB), this sampling technique generally yielded inconsistent results. Increasing sample size in future simulations would improve accuracy across all three sampling methods.
