Conference Participation at DAE 2026 at Rutgers University
Ludwig Kampel attended the Design and Analysis of Experiments Conference (DAE) 2026, which took place from May 19 to 21, 2026, at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, USA.
At the conference, Ludwig presented the poster “Covering Arrays for Experiments in Forestry”, joint work with Marlene Koelbing.
© Ludwig Kampel
European forests are facing growing pressure from climate change. Recent research has shown major changes in forest health and tree species composition across Europe [1]. This makes it increasingly important to design forest restoration and planting experiments that can identify strong and resilient mixtures of tree species.
The presented work studies how Covering Arrays can be used to design forestry experiments. In this setting, each row of a covering array represents a mixture of tree species to be planted in a forest plot. The goal is to test species combinations efficiently and find mixtures that perform well in large-scale planting trials.
Using the forest simulation model iLand, Ludwig and Marlene compared experiments based on Covering Arrays with Randomized Partition Designs. The simulations covered a period of 100 years and included 10 tree species. The study evaluated both total wood volume and positive interactions between tree species.
Early results show that experiments based on Covering Arrays can lead to higher total wood volume and stronger beneficial interactions between planted tree species.
[1] Senf et al. (2024), Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02406-8