Quantitative Wood Anatomy Certain Geometrical-Statistical Relationships

A method for the quantitative characterization of wood structure is described. It is based on the principles and techniques of stereology developed first by material scientists. The method has its major advantage in that it does not require direct measurement of structural elements, only counts of points and intersections using a grid system superimposed on the images of microscopic structures. From the basic counts, size distribution parameters are calculated based on formulae derived from geometrical-statistical relationships. The relationships are presented in the form of equations for the calculation of size distribution parameters from simple counts