This work was carried out in a uneven-aged stand at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil, to compare estimates of the number of trees per hectare, volume per hectare, basal area per hectare, medium diameter and medium height of the stand and number of species, using plots of equal size (Method I) and the horizontal point sampling (Bitterlich Method), with basal area factors K=1, K=2 and K=4 (Methods II, III and IV, respectively). After analyses, it was verified that: a) to meet to a certain sampling error, a larger number of sampling points is needed in comparison with the number of plots of equal size; b) no significant difference was found among the volume estimates per hectare, basal area per hectare, medium diameter and medium height of the stand, obtained from the plots of equal size and the sampling points, regardless of the basal area factor; c) the horizontal point sampling (Bitterlich Method) can be used for characterization of the number of species in an uneven-aged stand if there is an increase of number of points or if the forest presents low species diversity; d) there was no significant difference among the numbers of trees per hectare and diameter class for the sampling methods studied. Methods II, III and IV underestimate the number of trees in the largest DAP classes and overestimate it in the smallest ones.
Uneven-aged stand; sampling methods; Bitterlich method
