COMPARISON OF CLASSICAL VS INVERSE SAMPLING FOR ESTIMATING PLANT COVER USING MONTE-CARLO SIMULATIONS

Inverse and classical point sampling techniques for estimating percent cover of rare species are considered. A Monte Carlo simulation is use d to study the statistical properties of these estimators as influence d by the spatial distribution and association of individual species an d to examine the effect of an error in estimating percent cover for th e purpose of determining sample sizes. In each case considered, the pe rformance of inverse sampling is comparable with or better than the cl assical technique. This improvement is due to the fact that inverse sa mpling fixes the number of hits required to achieve a specified bound on the error of estimation instead of fixing the sample size as with t he classical technique.