A state forester has been asked to update a forest inventory of tree stand volumes from the year 2000. In 2000 the department had adequate funds to complete the task with real measurements. But in 2010, after the recession, there were not enough funds to measure volumes in all of the stands; only 20 stands were measured. For stand management purposes, the forester need to know what the volumes of all the stands were in 2010. There is still no money, and besides, it is already 2012. The forester wants to know if he can reliably use the 2000 data to predict what the stand volumes were in 2010. The data below represent forest stands that were measured in both 2010 & 2000.

Volume 2010: 370 290 520 490 530 330 310 400 450 430 460 480 430 500 640 660 490 510 270 380

Volume 2000: 280 240 410 360 390 220 270 340 360 360 400 380 350 390 480 520 400 430 230 270

Is this relationship sufficiently strong to predict volumes of the unknown stands in 2010? What is the best fit curve for the relationship between volume in 2000 & 2010?

Please help! Urgently need help. I don’t understand how to do this problem. I need to put this info into SPSS for my biostats class and if the relationship is ftrong enough to predict volumes and what the best curve is. If you can give me some sort of guidance I would really appreciate it!