Forest Sciences Commons^™

A Test Of The Mean Distance Method For Forest Regeneration Assessment, Daniel Unger, Jeremy P. Stovall, Brian P. Oswald, David Kulhavy, I-Kuai Hung

Faculty Publications

A new distance-based estimator for forest regeneration assessment, the mean distance method, was developed by combining ideas and techniques from the wandering quarter method, T-square sampling and the random pairs method. The performance of the mean distance method was compared to conventional 4.05 square meter plot sampling through simulation analysis on 405 square meter blocks of a field surveyed clumped distribution and a computer generated random distribution at different levels of density of 100, 50 and 25%. The mean distance method accurately estimated density on the random populations but the mean distance method estimates were more variable than those of …