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Methods for determining the accuracy and comparing the agreement between ground measures and advanced forest inventory techniques

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Two critical questions often arise in forest management pertaining to the accuracy and suitability of any new forest inventory technique at the tree or stand level: how can we judge whether a new... More ≫

Description

Two critical questions often arise in forest management pertaining to the accuracy and suitability of any new forest inventory technique at the tree or stand level: how can we judge whether a new inventory technique is valid or of acceptable accuracy; and how can we compare if a new inventory technique agrees with or is better than an existing one. This technical document describes the procedures and the statistical methods that collectively provide the tools to address and answer these questions.

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Method comparison and method calibration applicable to forest measurements and model predictions

Description

In forest mensuration, forest inventory and forest modeling, it is common to compare the agreement between two sets of quantitative measurements. One set could be from a commonly-accepted... More ≫

Description

In forest mensuration, forest inventory and forest modeling, it is common to compare the agreement between two sets of quantitative measurements. One set could be from a commonly-accepted reference method, the other from a new or alternative method, device, or model. If the measurements are statistically the same or practically "close enough" to each other, the more complex, more destructive and/or costly method can be replaced by the simpler, less destructive and/or more efficient method. Traditional statistical approaches used for such comparisons based on bias, correlation coefficient, coefficient of determination and significance tests are inadequate and not really relevant for agreement analysis. Various agreement measures proposed for agreement analysis are also insufficient and not pertinent in many respects. An alternative approach based on the limits of agreement proposed by Bland and Altman (1986) is introduced and demonstrated in this study, along with the method...

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