Hierarchical Bayesian models for small area estimation of county-level private forest landowner population

The National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS), administered by the USDA Forest Service, provides estimates of private forest ownership characteristics, and ownersâ attitudes and behaviors at a national-, regional- and state-level. Due to small sample sizes prescribed for inference at the state-level, there are insufficient data to support county-level estimates. However, county-level estimates of NWOS variables are desired because ownership programs and education initiatives often occur at the county-level and such information could help tailor these efforts to better match county-specific needs and demographics. Here, we present and assess methods to estimate the number of private forest ownerships at the county-level for two states, Montana and New Jersey. To assess model performance, true population parameters were derived from cadastral and remote sensing data. Two small area estimation (SAE) models, the Fay-Herriot (FH) and FH with conditional autoregressive random effects (FHCAR), improved estimated county-level population mean squared error (MSE) over that achieved by direct estimates. The proposed SAE models use covariates to improve accuracy and precision of county-level estimates. Results show total forest area and 2010 decennial Census population density covariates explained a significant portion of variability in county-level population size. These and other results suggest the proposed SAE methods yield a statistically robust approach to deliver reliable estimates of private ownership population size and could be extended to additional important NWOS variables at the county-level.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Replication Data for: Hierarchical Bayesian models for small area estimation of county-level private forest landowner population

files containing R data image and associated scripts for running small area estimation models of the number of private forest ownerships at the county-level for Montana and New Jerse