Some refinements on the comparison of areal sampling methods via simulation

Abstract

The design of forest inventories and development of new sampling methods useful in such inventories normally have a two-fold target of design unbiasedness and minimum variance in mind. Many considerations such as costs go into the choices of sampling method for operational and other levels of inventory. However, the variance in terms of meeting a specified level of precision is always among the most important criteria. Similarly, in designing new sampling methods, one always seeks to decrease the variance of the new method compared to existing methods. This paper provides a review of some graphical methods that may prove useful in these endeavors. In addition, in the case of the comparison of variances between new and existing methods, it introduces the use of wavelet filtering to decompose the sampling variance associated with the estimators under consideration into scale-based components of variance. This yields an analysis of variance of sorts regarding how the methods compare over different distance/area classes. The graphical tools are also shown to be applicable to the wavelet decomposition. These graphical tools may prove useful in summarizing the results for inventory design, while the wavelet results may prove helpful as we begin to look at sampling designs more in light of spatial processes for a given population of trees or downed coarse woody debris.