Harmonizing biomass tables by generalized least squares.

To construct biomass tables for various tree components that are consistent with each other, one may use linear regression techniques with dummy variables. When the biomass of these components is measured on the same sample trees, one should also use the generalized rather than ordinary least squares method. A procedure is shown which allows the estimation of the covariance matric of the sample biomass values and circumvents the problem of storing and inverting large covariance matrices.-from Authors