Sampling Strategies Tutorial
| Type of sampling | Systematic | Random | Haphazard |
| Red Maple (common) | 8.6% | 7.3% | 18.5% |
| White Oak (common) | 38.3% | 17.4% | 17.9% |
| Sweet birch (rare) | 71.4% | 100%* | 100%* |
| American basswood (rare) | 64.3% | 100%* | 100%* |
| Time spent | 12 hours, 6 minutes | 12 hours, 39 minutes | 12 hours, 45 minutes |
Table showing percent errors for various sampling techniques. *0 individuals sampled when the density is 1.2 for Sweet birch and 1.5 for American basswood
Systematic sampling resulted in the fastest sampling time. Random sampling had the lowest percent error for the most common species, while systematic sampling had the lowest percent error for the rarest species.
The accuracy of the sampling tended to increase with higher abundance of a given species. On average, it appears as though systematic sampling resulted in the lowest sampling error, however for the common species alone random and haphazard sampling beat out systematic sampling.
One may be faster, but they are all fairly similar!