Response designs and support regions in sampling continuous domains

摘要: In many environmental samples, the target population is distributed over space in a more or less continuous manner, e.g., waters of lake trees forest. Attributes such can be conceptualized as function defined on spatial domain population. Some attributes (e.g., water temperature) observed at point; others species diversity) only determined finite extent support region. A fixed-shape with uniform weights leads to an unbiased estimator total; however, it may impossible maintain fixed shape near boundaries. From purely formal standpoint, unbiasedness maintained by using differential changing region boundary. Both these procedures raise some issues interpretation that often are overlooked. We derive estimators account for edge effects under several strategies, and identify issues, examples from forestry limnology. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.