I participated in sampling a virtual forest, Snyder-Middleswarth Natural Area using three sampling strategies. I used the area-based method for all three data collections. I used a sample size of 24 plots with a total sampled area of 2400m2. First, I used the Systematic placement method. which took 12 hours and 7 minutes to sample. The second sampling I used was the Random placement method. This method took 12 hours and 46 minutes. The third sampling I used was the Haphazard placement method, taking a total time of 12 hours and 32 minutes. The systematic sampling took the least amount of time.
The following are the results for the two most common and two rarest species.
| Percentage Error | Actual | Systematic | Random | Haphazard | Avg |
| Eastern Hemlock | 469.9 | 3.3% | 23.7% | 3.3% | 10.1% |
| Red Maple | 118.9 | 4.3% | 20.6% | 41.9% | 22.2% |
| Striped Maple | 17.5 | 69.4% | 80.9% | 65.6% | 72.0% |
| White Pine | 8.4 | 100.0% | 90.5% | 100.0% | 96.8% |
The accuracy was better for species with a higher abundance. The error seems to be less in the sampling that used systematic placement. I believe that more sample plots should be used, as there were White Pines in the area, yet two of the placements’ methods did not capture a tree. If we were to use only 24 placements and one method, it would be possible to miss an entire species. It may be rare; however, we could be missing a succession period of those trees due to a disturbance. There could be a disturbance or a stressor that could begin to affect the other tree species. With perfect economic conditions various techniques could be employed to gather more data to help create a whole picture of what is happening in the environment you are studying.
One method was faster but all were fairly similar. You don’t save time by skipping random sampling or not much!
while more data may help, it overall demonstrates the difficulty of sampling rare species and that you must always interpret your results with caution and recognize you will never have a completely accurate data of the forest as long as you are taking samples and not measuring every tree.