Sample design

Prior to inventory, a stratification needs to be done. This is valid also in a complete inventory (when all stands in the analysis area are included), since general inventory parameters are set in this part.

A stratum is defined usually based on volume and age from the stand register. The stands (their productive forest land areas) are related to one of the several user-defined strata. The stratum-matrix should first be arranged according to current forest state, and before that, you might want to separate the analysis area (imported in one stand register) into different "levels". A level in this case could be a certain type of forests (e.g., stands with the dominating tree species Pinus contorta) where a certain inventory-scheme should be applied.

The reason to stratify...

Select the imported stand register, i.e. the analysis area to be in-field inventoried by plotwise sampling in sampled stands (obtaining "strata data"). ...