Big BAF sampling in mixed species forest structures of northeastern North America: influence of count and measure BAF under cost constraints

Two Contemporary and Efficient Two-Stage Sampling Methods for Estimating the Volume of Forest Stands: A Brief Overview and Unified Mathematical Description

“…References can be found for softwood forests like fir (Abies × borisii-regis Mattf) (Samiotis, 2008), redwood/Douglas-fir (Corrin, 1998;Marshall et al, 2004;Opalach, 2017), white pine in New Hampshire (Desmarais, 2003), spruce-fir forests in Maine (Lindemuth, 2007), hemlock (Desmarais, 2002), Jeffery pine (Marshall et al, 2004), in hardwoods, like Appalachian of West Virginia (Brooks, 2006), Northern red oak (Desmarais, 2002) and Aspen in Minnesota (Deegan, 2011). Big BAF has been applied also in mixed species forest structures (Yang et al, 2017), with uneven-age and multistory oak-pine stands (Lindemuth, 2007) and in plantations, like loblolly pine with spatial heterogeneity (Yang & Burkhart, 2018). Geographically, the Big BAF applied in Canada and the western United States (Brooks, 2006;Chen, Yang, Hsu, Kershaw, & Prest, 2019;Corrin, 1998;Desmarais, 2002;Marshall et al, 2004), while studies have been done for potential applicability in northeastern North America (Brooks, 2006;Burk, 2004;Deegan, 2011;Lindemuth, 2007;Yang et al, 2017) and in Europe (Samiotis & Stamatellos, 2011).…”

“…Big BAF has been applied also in mixed species forest structures (Yang et al, 2017), with uneven-age and multistory oak-pine stands (Lindemuth, 2007) and in plantations, like loblolly pine with spatial heterogeneity (Yang & Burkhart, 2018). Geographically, the Big BAF applied in Canada and the western United States (Brooks, 2006;Chen, Yang, Hsu, Kershaw, & Prest, 2019;Corrin, 1998;Desmarais, 2002;Marshall et al, 2004), while studies have been done for potential applicability in northeastern North America (Brooks, 2006;Burk, 2004;Deegan, 2011;Lindemuth, 2007;Yang et al, 2017) and in Europe (Samiotis & Stamatellos, 2011).…”

“…The main applications of Big BAF sampling concerns estimations of stand volume (Lindemuth, 2007;Marshall et al, 2004;Opalach, 2017;Yang & Burkhart, 2018), including total volume, merchantable volume, sawlog volume (saw timber) and pulpwood volume (Kershaw Jr. et al, 2016b;Yang et al, 2017), generally for timber cruising (Corrin, 1998). Current applications of Big BAF turns from estimations of volume to estimations of the average forest biomass (Ellis et al, 2019;Griscom, Ellis, & Putz, 2014) and carbon, demonstrating the efficiency and overall inventory costs reduction of this method (Chen et al, 2019).…”

“…Bitterlich sampling, as used extensively in the forest literature, is an application of PPS sampling (Gregoire & Valentine, 2007a;Kershaw Jr. et al, 2016b;Marshall, Iles, & Bell, 2004;Rice et al, 2014). Bitterlich sampling utilizes a prism or Spiegel-Relaskop as an angle gauge instrument to project a horizontal angle at tree diameter at breast height and therefore selects potential samples proportional to the basal area (Yang et al, 2017). Using Bitterlich sampling, some bias is expected to occur in the final estimates due to edge effects, poor visibility, treatment of borderline trees and counting errors (Iles, 1989;Osman & Idris, 2012).…”

Some Refinements on the Comparison of Areal Sampling Methods via Simulation

“…In a companion study, Lynch [10] provided optimal cost-plus-loss solutions under an expected absolute value loss function and the variance function of Smith [4], using the cost functions developed by Zeide [7] and Gambill et al [8] for CPS and HPS, respectively. Yang et al [55], using the same optimization approach of Lynch [9], developed a cost function that was specific to the 'Big BAF' [56] sampling scheme. These authors used a CV versus F −1 representation for the variance relationship.…”