An assessment of white spruce tree volume equations in Canada

Abstract

In 1985, a survey of nine provinces and two territories was conducted to summarize operational tree volume estimation methods. Based on those results, six tree volume estimation functions were evaluated to answer the question: can a single model be used nation-wide for tree volume estimation? The six models were fitted to nation-wide data for 980 white spruce trees distributed nearly equally among the provinces and territories. Based on goodness of fit statistics and analysis of residuals, Schumacher's model and the Quebec combined variable model performed marginally better than the others. Further, the analyses did not reveal any significant differences between territories and provinces. It appears that any of these models could be applied to broad regions of Canada without suffering significant losses in accuracy. -Authors