Plot intensity and cycle-length effects on growth and removals estimates from forest inventories

Paul Van Deusen, Francis A. Roesch

Abstract


ontinuous forest inventories use permanent plots that are remeasured to provide information on growth, removals and mortality. Typically, all plots are remeasured within a narrow time span, but the USDA Forest Service has popularized a variant referred to as an annual forest inventory where a percentage of the permanent plots are remeasured every year. We discuss trade-offs between number of field plots and cycle length and provide some insight with example applications showing how these decisions impact growth and removals estimates. We also discuss a variant of the traditional growth over removals ratio estimator that limits degradation in estimate quality as cycle lengths increase.


Keywords


{Forest inventory; Remote Sensing; Remeasurement Cycle; FIA data

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