---
title: "Sampling unit in Collect Earth: how to choose?"
url: "https://openforis.support/questions/2463/sampling-unit-in-collect-earth-how-to-choose"
tags: ["collect"]
status: "answered"
score: 1
answer_count: 3
asked: "2019-08-08T10:46:57"
last_activity: "2019-09-18T19:07:37"
source: "Open Foris Support - Q&A Forum"
license: "Copyright Open Foris, 2026. Some rights reserved under creative commons license."
---

# Sampling unit in Collect Earth: how to choose?

Asked by flandsberg on 2019-08-08

Hello,

I am creating a Collect Earth survey from scratch in Collect. I thought my sampling unit would be "plot" but in the manual it is said "The first step is to define one (or more) Sampling unit (the highest level of the hierarchical structure of the sampling design, **typically the cluster, which contains plots**."

So, what is my sampling unit? How does one take the decision?

Thanks for the guidance!

Florence


## Answer (score 0, by Open Foris on 2019-08-08)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/2463/sampling-unit-in-collect-earth-how-to-choose/2464

When designing a Collect Earth survey always start with the Collect Earth template!
This template contains all of the attributes that are absolutely necessary for a Collect survey to work in Collect Earth ( except for slope, elevation and aspect which you can happily remove)

The reference to the cluster sampling unit is made in the manual for Collect as usually in the National Forest Inventories the plots are grouped into clusters in order to optimize the cost of the field work


## Answer (score 0, by flandsberg on 2019-08-08)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/2463/sampling-unit-in-collect-earth-how-to-choose/2466

Hi! 

Which Collect Earth template? I created one template from "VietnamTransect", which only has plot as sampling unit, keeping only the following entities:
 * Id
 * location
 * Operator
 * Actively saved
 * Actively saved on
 * Plot file

See [link text][1]

Is this ok? If useful, you can upload this for anybody. The only thing is that there is no list of units anymore...

Florence


  [1]: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o5Az9raccaBVBk2b8uUWzk0VKu04y8WL


## Answer (score 0, by flandsberg on 2019-09-18)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/2463/sampling-unit-in-collect-earth-how-to-choose/2501

Sorry everybody, the template I had produced was not adequate and therefore I was not using the right format. This question is irrelevant. Once I am in the right format (i.e. I start from a provided CE template), everything looks great, as usual!

Sorry for confusing everybody. I would delete this question if I knew how to...

Florence