Checking the Field Work

Abstract

With such a large census, and teams of mappers who are often inexperienced students or technicians, strict protocols for checking and revising all aspects of the data collection are important. Supervisors must carefully check the work of the field crews regularly, particularly near the beginning of the census. As long as one supervisor is always working with each field team, this is accomplished as part of the daily mapping routine and requires no further discussion. More important, there should be systematic re-sampling of stratified random samples of trees, aimed at both revealing errors so that improvements can be made and at estimating error rates for reporting purposes.