Unlike crop science where we grow again the crop in 3/6/9 months to have data of 2 years and take pool analysis of two years. But in forest science, silviculture and ecological studies we can not lay or repeat experiment due to their life rotation and biological characteristics of stands. Even in agroforestry trails attributes of tree components as its in continue growing phase. How statistically it can be repeated with same attributes successively for 2 years in ecological studies or any stand growth studies with minimum error.
It depends what you are trying to study. If you are counting birds or seeds in forests, then you just do repeated measurements on the same transects or trees. If you are measuring growth of plants or their biomass, then that is different. You can use non-invasive techniques to measure biomass, since destructive methods damage or destroy the system you are studying, and growth can be measured using repeated measures of crown surface area, for example. You can minimise errors by using random sampling, correct statistical analysis, eliminating bias, etc. :)
DEAR DR MANMOHAN, I am sure that there are few statistical designs available for analysis of such forest experiments.For detailed queries you should contact at IASRI (Indian Agricultural statistcal Research Institute,New Delhi) who are having very good and latest softwares to analyse various kinds of data under diverse conditions.I attended one such training couple of years back and got an overview of the stastical techniques available.However since my interest was only on field crops, most of the content with forests is washed out.But certainly IASRI and FRI do have competent softwares to analyse problems addreseed by your goodself.
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