Estimating the area fraction of geophysical fields from measurements along a transect

Methods are presented for estimating the fractional area coverage of geophysical phenomena from measurements taken along a transect. These methods are most useful for assessing potential errors in sampling strategies but may also be used for the analysis of data. The procedure provides a means to compute confidence interval estimates of the true area fraction when the autocovariance function for the geophysical field is known or assumed. Another approach that does not require a priori knowledge of the underlying autocovariance function is described for the special case of linear features modeled as a Poisson line process