Evaluation of the spatial linear model, random forest and gradient nearest-neighbour methods for imputing potential productivity and biomass of the Pacific Northwest forests

Abstract

Increasingly, forest management and conservation plans require spatially explicit information within a management or conservation unit. Forest biomass and potential productivity are critical variables for forest planning and assessment in the Pacific Northwest. Their values are often estimated from ground-measured sample data. For unsampled locations, forest analysts and planners lack forest productivity and biomass values, so values must be predicted. Using simulated data and forest inventory and analysis data collected in Oregon and Washington, we examined the performance of the spatial linear model (SLM), random forest (RF) and gradient nearest neighbour (GNN) for mapping and estimating biomass and potential productivity of Pacific Northwest forests. Simulations of artificial populations and subsamplings of forest biomass and productivity data showed that the SLM hadsmallerempiricalroot-mean-squaredpredictionerrors(RMSPE)forawidevarietyofdatatypes,withgenerally lessbiasandbetterintervalcoveragethanRFandGNN.Thesepatternsheldforbothpointpredictionsandforpopulationaverages,withtheSLMreducingRMSPEby30.0and52.6percentovertwoGNNmethodsinpredictingpoint estimates for forest biomass and potential productivity.