Abstract
Many forestry models require the input of stand size class information, a variable with multiple definitions across forest inventories. This work describes a crosswalk between stand age class and stand size class for several forest type groups in Minnesota to facilitate consistency and availability of the latter information. Refinements to the crosswalk include ratio adjustments that redistribute the number of plots (or hectares) from one estimated size class to another, based on known crosswalk error rates. The results showed that 61.9% of all plots were correctly classified, and 95.5% were within one size class. Correct classifications for individual forest type/size class combinations ranged from 16.7–79.2%. Applying the crosswalk to a validation dataset produced percent errors from −46.4% to 49.4%, but with the ratio adjustment, errors dropped to −20.1% to 14.4%. These results suggest that the crosswalk and ratio adjustments provide a coarse, yet reasonable, substitute to using more complex stand size classification methodologies, particularly when forecasting future stand conditions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 647 |
| Journal | Forests |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: Funding for this work was provided by the Interagency Information Cooperative, the Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, McIntire Stennis capacity grant #1020087. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- Forest Inventory and Analysis
- age class
- crosswalk
- ratio adjustment
- size class
- stand