The continuous population approach to forest inventories and use of information in the design

An extended theoretical framework for the continuous population approach to forest inventories is derived. Here, we treat a simultaneous selection of sample points with any prescribed sampling intensity over a continuous population. Different ways to use available auxiliary information, for example, from remote sensing, by selection of approximately balanced or spatially balanced samples are considered. A large data set of spatially continuous individual tree‐level data is used to demonstrate the potential of these theoretical approaches. This study shows new ways to integrate remote sensing information in designs for forest inventory applications, which can significantly reduce the variance of the Horvitz–Thompson estimator for target variables related to the auxiliary information.