Nested plot designs used in forest inventory do not accurately capture tree species richness in Southwestern European forests

London

2024

24 S.

Sonderdruck

13347S

40005048

Nested plot designs with concentric plots with increasing radii and size threshold underestimate tree species richness with respect to full census sampling with no tree size restrictions. Regeneration emerged as the most relevant pool for tree species richness estimation. Nested or concentric plot designs, where trees are sampled according to their size and position, are common in National Forest Inventories (NFI) to reduce the sampling effort. However, this could bias the estimation of tree diversity such as species richness.