Recursive stratified sampling is a generalization of one-dimensional adaptive quadratures to multi-dimensional integrals. On each recursion step the integral and the error are estimated using a plain Monte Carlo algorithm. If the error estimate is larger than the required accuracy the integration volume is divided into sub-volumes and the procedure is recursively applied to sub-volumes.
The ordinary 'dividing by two' strategy does not work for multi-dimensions as the number of sub-volumes grows way too fast to keep track of. Instead one estimates along which dimension a subdivision should bring the most dividends and only subdivides the volume along this dimension.
The stratified sampling algorithm concentrates the sampling points in the regions where the variance of the function is largest thus reducing the grand variance and making the sampling more effective, as shown on the illustration.
The popular MISER routine implements a similar algorithm.
Read more about this topic: Monte Carlo Integration