The adjustment of hypsometric relations using data from forest inventory aiming at the estimation of individual tree volumes is a common task in Brazilian forestry companies. This study used a data set of 481 trees of Eucalyptus grandis from a forest inventory. Simulation was carried out varying sample sizes from 6 to 204 sample-trees. For each sample size it was run 10,000 simulations for each size samples selected randomly. This study aimed at evaluating the effect of sample size and structure on the precision of a previously chosen hypsometric model which had, as independent variables, the Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) and the tree age. It was also evaluated the effect of these covariates on the tree heights estimates. It was concluded that a sample with at least 27 trees could more precisely estimate tree height when compared to smaller samples. In addition, sample sizes containing more than 27 trees did not shown significant improving on the precision of the height estimates. For the hipysometric model, the variable DBH was more valuable to estimate the tree height than the covariate age. For the trees with larger DBH, the variable age showed to be more influent.
Tree height; sampling; forest inventory
