New regression estimators in forest inventories with two-phase sampling and partially exhaustive information: a design-based Monte Carlo approach with applications to small-area estimation

We consider two-phase sampling schemes where one component of the auxiliary information is known in every point (“wall-to-wall”) and a second component is available only in the large sample of the first phase, whereas the second phase yields a subsample with the terrestrial inventory. This setup is of growing interest in forest inventory thanks to the recent advances in remote sensing, in particular, the availability of LiDAR data. We propose a new two-phase regression estimator for global and local estimation and derive its asymptotic design-based variance. The new estimator performs better than the classical regression estimator. Furthermore, it can be generalized to cluster sampling and two-stage tree sampling within plots. Simulations and a case study with LiDAR data illustrate the theory.