I used three sampling techniques in this tutorial: haphazard, area random and distance random.
Time needed for sampling was as follows:
haphazard: 11 hours 50 min
area random: 13 hours 10 min
distance random: 4 hours 48 minutes.
By far the shortest sampling time needed was distance random, this was also by far the most accurate of the three measurements.
When it came to species abundance I saw great variation in the 3 methods with distance random showing the closest to actual results. Many species were not found at all in any of the techniques but the most were missed with area random sampling.
It was very interesting to see the difference in measurements to see that the haphazard technique was the most inaccurate and did seem to show some bias. I tried to pick dense and less dense areas to get a random result but ended up assuming much higher density than was true for almost all abundant species. It also took a long time to do the sampling. I see this as the least successful method and I agree with the reading that this technique shows bias and likely shouldn’t be used often.