Estimating the volume of forest growing stock from relascope or ocular assessments

What is it about?

The potential of integrating probabilistic sampling and estimation with the conventional technique referred to as forest inventory by compartments is presented. Distinctively, two practical strategies for the assessment of growing stock volume using two-phase sampling are here presented, namely: (i) relascope basal area estimation performed on first-phase sampling points followed by volume estimation performed on a sub-sample of points selected in the second phase; (ii) ocular evaluation of growing stock volume performed on first-phase sampling plots of fixed size followed by volume estimation performed on a sub-sample of plots selected in the second phase.

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Why is it important?

Information about the state of and changes to forest stands is fundamental for environmental and timber assessment at various levels of forest management planning. Data acquisition is usually based on standwise field inventories which provide updated figures for each forest management unit. Such a survey approach is commonly referred to as forest inventory by compartments. In countries characterized by high labour costs, the assessment of growing stock volume at compartment level may be so expensive as to jeopardize management planning. A solution to this problem is here provided in terms of two-phase sampling strategy exploiting relascope or ocular assessments.

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