Several studies reveal that there is a strong interconnection between climate change and biodiversity. Indeed, estimating plant biodiversity is an important issue under forest ecosystem monitoring, which allows the evaluation of carbon storage and sequestration capacity. To this end, a two-phase strategy, suitably compatible with the most adopted sampling designs in large-scale forest inventories, is proposed. In the first phase, tessellation stratified sampling is performed by partitioning the study area into a grid of quadrats and by randomly selecting a point in each quadrat. The first-phase points are classified as forest or nonforest using remotely sensed imagery. In the second phase, a sample of points is selected from those classified as forest by means of simple random sampling without replacement. The second-phase points constitute the centers of circular plots that are visited in the field to record plant species (usually trees) and their abundance. Estimators of abundance and diversity and estimators of their variances are presented. The proposed strategy is applied in a forest area from Central Italy, as a case study. With respect to the sampling effort, the resulting estimates of relative standard errors are satisfactory, especially those regarding the overall total and diversity index estimators. The proposed statistical approach represents a suitable reference for integrated forest inventory frameworks effectively supporting biodiversity monitoring and assessment. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Accurate inventory and mapping of olive (Olea europaea L.) tree attributes represents a central issue to support the olive production system. With reference to the cultivation, there is a high heterogeneity and complexity in the cultivation of olive trees, which is reflected in the large variability in olive grove surfaces. This poses some challenge in accurately estimating olive tree attributes via traditional inventory approaches, as commonly adopted in national forest inventory. From a methodological point of view, the complexity and heterogeneity of olive tree groves can be comparable to the problem of accurately estimating tree outside forests (TOF) attributes. In this study, we tested whether a plot sampling approach formerly developed for TOF is suitable for estimating olive tree attributes at large scale. We tested this approach in a case study where the census of the olive crop area and the number of olive groves was conducted from photo-interpretation of high resolution aerial orthoimagery, used as benchmark to test the effectiveness of the plot sampling approach. The main result of this study is that the plot sampling method can be applied for estimating olive tree attributes. Our obtained RSEs were below 20%, with a limited sampling effort of about 6% of the studied population; the obtained RSEs were below 6% when increasing sampling up to about 21% the studied population. Using robust statistical procedures among countries, should allow obtaining harmonized and comparable information, which can increase the knowledge of olive geographical distribution and structure at its relevant Mediterranean scale. © 2019, Italian Society of Remote Sensing. All rights reserved.