Annual Design-Based Estimation for the Annualized Inventories of Forest Inventoryand Analysis: Sample size Determination

摘要

The Forest Inventory and Analysis units in the USDA Forest Service have beenmandated by Congress to go to an annualized inventory where a certain percentage of plots, say 20 percent, will be measured in each State each year. Although this will result in an annual sample size that will be too small for reliable inference for many areas, it is a sufficiently large sample to draw annual inferences for large areas in terms of what is there and how much has changed on an annual basis. This is extremely useful in estimating the state of the forest in the country over time in terms of health, timber supply, and so forth.