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

Big Basal Area Factor (Big BAF) and Point-3P are two-stage sampling methods. In the first stage the sampling units, in both methods, are Bitterlich points where the selection of the trees is proportional to their basal area. In the second stage, sampling units are trees which are a subset of the first stage trees. In the Big BAF method, the probability of selecting trees in the second stage is made proportional to the two BAFs’ ratio, with a basal area factor larger than that of the first stage. In the Point-3P method the probability of selecting trees, in the second stage, is based on the height prediction and use of a specific random number table. Estimates of the forest stands’ volume and their sampling errors are based on the theory of the product of two random variables. The increasing error in the second stage is small, but the total cost of measuring the trees is much smaller than simply using the first stage, with all the trees measured. In general, the two sampling methods are modern and cost-effective approaches that can be applied in forest stand inventories for forest management purposes and are receiving the growing interest of researchers in the current decade.