Comparing convenience and probability sampling for urban ecology applications

1. Urban forest ecosystems confer multiple ecosystem services. There is thus a need to quantify ecological characteristics in terms of community structure and composition so that benefits can be better understood in ecosystem service models. Efficient sampling and monitoring methods are crucial in this process.
2. Full tree inventories are scarce due to time and financial constraints, thus a variety of sampling methods exist. Modern vegetation surveys increasingly use stratified-random plot-based sampling to reduce the bias associated with convenience sampling, even though the latter can save time and increase species richness scores. The urban landscape, with a high degree of conspecific clustering and high species diversity, provides a unique biogeographical case for comparing these two methodological approaches.
3. We use two spatially extensive convenience samples of the urban forest of Meran (Italy) and compare the community structure, tree characteristics and ecosystem servic...