Inventory Methods and GIS – Introduction to GIS

Lab 6

Forest Inventory Project

Samwise Gamgee appreciated your nice forest map. He wants to know more about his
forest and asks you to measure the diameters of the trees growing there. Additionally, you
are asked to create a diameter map that shows a stand wise distribution of the trees’
diameters. Samwise Gamgee is also interested in how reliable these results are, that is,
how much the standard error of these measurements per forest stand is. He’d like you to
add such a reliability map.
Your tasks are as follows:
 Create an outline map with the forest types as well as a single spaced grid to
locate the inventory plots.
 Integrate the inventory plots from the updated outline map into the digital forest
map.
 Create a mean diameter map.
 Create a measurement-reliability map showing the standard error of your
measurements for each forest stand.
Outline Map
Copy the digital forest map data
1. Open ArcMap, go for the Catalog
Window and create folder connections
to S:\SRM and C:\Temp
2. Navigate to S:\SRM\Invenory-
Methods-Stat-GIS\GIS\
Lab-6
Prepare the Map
1. Have a look at Bag_End_Forest.mdb. It
is a personal Geodatabase containing
a feature dataset named
Bag_End_Forest, which again
contains the feature class
ForestPolygons.
2. Copy the Geodatabase to C:\Temp.
Right-click it and go for Copy. Right-click C:\Temp go for Paste.
3. Load ForestPolygons from the Geodatabase in your folder into your map. Use
File  Add Data... or drag it with your mouse to the map area and drop it
there.
4. Change the symbols of the forest
stand polygons to visualise their
forest types:
a. Go for the layer properties
of ForestPolygons. At the
page Symbology, click the
button Import... top
right.
b. At Import Smbology go for
the first option, then click at
the folder icon at the right. Go for
S:\SRM\Inventory-Methods-
Stat-GIS\GIS\Lab-6\
forest_map.lyr and click OK.
This loads the symbol definition
from a so called Layer File.
c. At the Import Symobology
Matching Dialog, make sure that
btyp is selected as Value Field and
click OK. After clicking OK at the
Layer Properties, your layer shows
the symbols of the standard forest
types, you defined in lab 5. You can
save your own layer files by right
clicking your layer (see below).
5. Now let’s display the names of the polygons to be able to identify the forest stands
in the map
and while
measuring
the tree
diameters:

a. Go for the properties of ForestPolygons and then to the page Labels.

b. Check the box next to Label features in this layer.
c. Go for stand_id as Label Field
d. Click OK
6. Now, let’s create a grid for our sample plots:
a. Open the properties of the data frame by right clicking Layers and go for
the page Grids.
b. Click on New
Grid...
c. Go for
Measured
Grid and then
click Weiter >
d. Change the
Intervals to 50
Meters for both
the X axis and
the Y axis and
click Weiter >
e. Click Weiter >
f. Click Finish
g. Click OK
7. Switch to Layout View to watch your grid and beatify your map there:
a. Go for View  Layout View
b. Go for a scale of 1:5000, so that it is easy to measure distances in the
printed map with help of a ruler. Just type 5000 into drop down list right next
to the Add Data icon.
c. Add some useful items, like scale bar, etc.
 d. Export your map to PDF.
8. Done!

You go into the forest with the printed outline map. You randomly select sample plots at
locations where grid lines are crossing each other. While you are doing your
measurements, you record the measured values in Excel and update the map with the
centre points of the selected sample plots.
Integrate the Measurements from the Inventory Plots to the Digital
Forest Map
With help of your outline map, you established four up to ten sample plots within the
forest stands and measured the average diameter of the trees within these plots. Now
you are back in your office and want to integrate these plot wise measurements to have
some figures telling you something about your forest stand polygons. The figure below
shows you the sample plot layout.

Digitise the sample plot points

You have to digitise the sample plot locations and assign their plot numbers as well as the
measured diameters. The diameters are found in an excel file: sampleplots.xls.
1. Add the image S:SRM\Inventory-Methods-Stat-GIS\GIS\Lab-
6\sampleplots.tif to your map. Go for File  Add Data...
2. Switch back to Data View. Go for View  Data View
3. Make sure that the image is shown above your forest stands vectors. If it is not,
at the Table of Contents, make sure that you show the contents in List by
Drawing Order mode (blue icon activated next to Table of Contents, see
below) and then move the image above the vectors. Go for the properties of the
image layer and change its transparency to about 30%. This is done at the page
Display. Your map should look like the one shown below:

4. Create a new feature

class in your personal
geodatabase:
a. Open the Catalog
Window, right click
the feature dataset
Bag_End_Forest
and go for
New  Feature
Class...
b. Name your feature
class
sample_plots
and make sure that
its feature type is
Point Features.
 c. Click Weiter >
and create the
following fields:
plot,
Short Integer

diameter,
Long Integer

Just click into a field

at the column
Field Name and
start typing the
field’s name. Click
into a field in the
column Data Type
and select Short
Integer or Long
Integer from the list.

d. Click Finish.

5. Now, digitise the sample plot points and adjust their attributes:
a. Go for the Editor Toolbar: Customize  Toolbars  Editor
b. Start an edit session, use the Editor menu in the Editor Toolbar: Editor 
Start Editing
c. Open the Create Features Window with the very right icon in the editor
toolbar ( )
d. In the upper list select sample_plots and the lower list (Construction
Tools) select Point
e. Digitise all the sample plot points and adjust their attributes.:
plot: the number written next to each point
diameter: the numbers in the excel file
S:\SRM\Inventory-Methods-Stat-GIS\GIS\
Lab-6\sampleplots.xls
Open the feature attribute table of sample_plots by right clicking it and then
go for Open Attribute Table and type the values into each line, which
is created after you created a point. The Excel file has a data sheet for each
of the forest stand. These sheets are named as the stand_ids.
f. Once in a while, go for Editor  Save Edits. This saves the inventory
plot points and serves as a point of recovery in case your ArcMap crashes.
g. After finishing the last sample point, go for Editor  Stop Editing
Add the Sample plot data to the Forest Stand Polygons
1. For each of our forest stand polygons, we have quite a few sets of sample plot
data. Firstly, we must know, in which forest stand polygon which sample plot point
resides. One way is to add the forest stand id to our sample plot points:
a. Think about, which GIS functionality could do this for us – is it:
Buffer
Join by Location
Join by Attributes
Select by Location?
 b. Yes, you are right: It’s Join by
Location!

If we go for our sample plots

as the source table, we would
get all the attributes of the
forest polygons, which they
fall inside. This is just what
we want.
c. So, right click the layer
sample_plots and go for
Joins and Relates 
Join...
d. In the top most drop down
list go for Join data from
another layer based on
spatial location, the other
layer, where the data is
supposed to come from is
ForestPolygons and the
first option is the one, we
want to go for.
e. Store the output as
smplots_stands in Bag_End_Forest inside the geodatabase Bag-
End_Forest.mdb. In the Save Dialog, you might have to change the output
type from Shapefile to File and Personal Geodatabase feature
classes (see below)

2. Now, as we know which plot resides in which forest stand, we can add the sample
plot point data to the forest polygons in a summarised way:
a. Open the Feature Attribute Table of the new layer smplots_stands
b. Right click the field-heading stand_id and go for Summarize...
c. Leave stand_id in the list Select a field to summarize
d. Expand diameter and check
Average, Sum, Standard
Deviation and Variance
e. Click the folder icon next to
output table and store the
summarize table in the personal
Geodatabase
Bag-End_Forest.mdb as
stands_smplots
f. Click OK
g. Answer the following question
with Yes, as you would like to
add the table to your map
3. Now, we have to add this summarised sample plot data from the table
stands_smplots to our forest stand polygons. The function we need now is the
Join by Attributes.
a. So, right click your forest
stand polygon layer
(ForestPolygons) and go for
Joins and Relates 
Join...
b. Go for Join attributes
from a table
c. The common attribute in
these two tables is
stand_id. Values belong
together, when the value of
stand_id is the same. So,
stand_id is both the foreign
key in the feature attribute
table of ForestPolygons and
the primary key in the
table stands_smplots. That is,
we have to select his attribute
in the two drop down lists
d. Click OK
4. Done!
Prepare the Diameter Map
Now, we have all the data necessary to create both the diameter map and the reliability
map. To prepare this map, we can reuse our outline map. Doing so, we only have to
change the symbology of the polygons.
1. Create the diameter map:
a. Make the sample plot image invisible
b. Change the symbology of your forest stand map by changing the values
field from btyp to Average_diameter

Prepare the Reliability Map

The reliability map should show the Standard Error of your measurements.
Remember how the Standard Error is calculated and which figures it is based on. Given
are for each forest stand:
 The number of samples
 The average diameter
 The standard deviation of the diameters
 The variance of the diameters

1. Add the two fields:

 abs_std_err for the absolute standard error
 rel_std_err for the relative standard error
to the feature attribute table of ForestPolygons and define their field types as
double. They are supposed to store the absolute standard error as well as the
relative standard error.
  Right click the layer ForestPolygons
and go for Open Attribute Table
 In the Table Options Menu go for Add
Field...
c. Then define the field by name and type

2. The standard error is the standard deviation of the diameters divided by the square
root of the number of samples.

Unfortunately, one of our stands – a4 –

has the management type unforested
area (Nichtholzboden). That is, there
doesn’t grow any tree and so we
couldn’t measure any there and the
number of measurements as well as its
square root are zero. Division by zero is
not defined.

So, before we can continue, we have to

select all stands but a4.
a. In the table options menu, go for
Select by Attributes
b. Double click
ForestPolygons.stand_id in
the field list
c. Select the not equal operator <>
d. Click Get Unique Values and
double click ‘a4’
e. This creates the expression:
ForestPolygons.stand_id <> ‘a4’
3. Calculate the absolute Standard Error with help of the field calculator. If you cannot
select Field Calculator... from the menu, you will have to go for Editor 
Start Editing. As we selected some lines in the table, the field calculator does
only affect the selected lines.
a. The standard error is the standard deviation of the diameters divided by the
square root of the number of samples:
𝑆𝐷(𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟)
√𝑛
b. The standard deviation of the diameters is stored in the attribute
SD_diameter, the number of sample plots is stored in the attribute
Cnt_stand_id. The square root is calculated with the function Sqr(). So,
the formula is:
[stands_smplots.SD_diameter] / Sqr ( [stands_smplots.Cnt_stand_id] )
You can get the attribute namess by double clicking them into the text field
as well as the function Sqr().

4. Calculate the relative standard error:

a. Just divide the absolute standard error by the average diameter and multiply
this by 100. This formula looks like:
[ForestPolygons.abs_std_err] / [stands_smplots.Ave_diameter] * 100
Double click the attributes in the list to get them into the text field
5. To display the diameter map and the reliability map simultaneously, we have to
show them in two data frames. So, add a new data frame to your map
a. Use Insert  Data Frame
6. Copy the layer ForestPolygons from your first data frame...
 7. ... and paste it into your second one.

8. Change the symbology of the

second forest stand layer to
display the relative standard
error and set the colours in a
way that shows that a
standard error of 10% or less
is pretty desirable.

Layout the Maps

1. Switch to Layout View. Go for
View  Layout View
2. Arrange the two data frames,
set their scales both to
1:10.000 and insert other
useful items.
3. The diameter map still has the
measured grid to place the
inventory plot points. You can
easily deactivate it from the
dataframe properties by
unchecking the box in front of
the entry in the list (see right)
 4. To switch back and forth between the two data frames, just right click them at the
table of contents and go for Activate.
5. Your map could look a bit like the one below:

But you can make it look much more pretty... (-: (Lefthander...)
6. Export the map to PDF
7. Copy your Geodatabase from C:\Temp to H:\. This makes it available later, when
you don’t have the chance to sit at one and the same computer as you are doing
now.

Alternative way to analyse the inventory plot data.

Here, we firstly added the forest stand ids to the inventory plot points and then attached
their data in a summarised way to the forest stand polygons. Is there another way to add
the inventory plot data to the forest stand polygons?
Think about the different variations of Joins by Location.