An important part of the event will be parallel group work sessions. On some of those, we will decide during the events, but you are also very welcome to suggest such sessions before hand. Just submit an abstract containing the proposal.
So far, the following group sessions have been suggested. If you are interested to contribute, please submit an abstract refering to the respective session.
EcoWeaver Workbench
(Tim Alamenciak)
We invite ecologists (broadly defined - including social scientists who focus on ecology, social-ecological systems, theoretical ecology, field ecology, restoration and conservation, etc.) to join a hands-on prototyping session to develop structured tools for encoding and synthesizing causal relationships in ecological literature. Bring a published paper of your own: we will use it as raw material to stress-test a causal knowledge schema, probing where the representation holds up and where it needs rethinking. Your domain expertise is what makes this exercise meaningful. The goal is to leave with a schema that better reflects how ecologists actually think about cause and effect. If you'd like to participate, please submit a link to your paper (already published - open access preferred) and a brief note on your ecological focus area with an indication that this is a contribution for this session as an abstract.
Bridging the Evidence Gap: A Collaborative Question-Ranking Workshop for EcoWeaver
(Robert Frühstückl, Tarek Al Mustafa, Tim Alamenciak)
Restoration ecology often suffers from a disconnect between the availability of scientific evidence and the specific, site-level questions faced by practitioners. While high-level syntheses provide general guidance, practitioners frequently require precise answers to localized problems—for example, "What is the most effective method for managing European Buckthorn in a Carolinian grassland?" To address this, we propose a collaborative workshop designed to identify and prioritize the high-value questions that should drive the development of the EcoWeaver knowledge graph.
Drawing on Bill Sutherland’s environmental scan approach, this session will assemble a diverse group of restoration researchers and practitioners to iteratively identify, refine, and rank evidence needs specific to their ecosystem types. By systematically surfacing the "unanswered" questions of the field, the workshop aims to create a prioritized research and synthesis agenda that informs the architecture of EcoWeaver. Rather than relying on top-down priorities, this process ensures that the resulting knowledge graph is grounded in the actual needs of those implementing restoration on the ground.
The output of the session will be a ranked list of evidence gaps that will be directly integrated into the EcoWeaver framework, transforming the graph from a theoretical exercise into a tool for actionable local intelligence. Participants will leave with a shared understanding of the current evidence landscape and a direct role in shaping a digital tool designed to reduce the research-practice gap in restoration ecology.
Indigenous and local knowledge-weaving: territorial perspectives from Chile
(Monica Ortiz)
In light of the global and local social-ecological crises, Indigenous and Local Knowledge, also known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ILK/TEK), is frequently evoked as an essential source of experiences and practices that should be, in some way, integrated and intertwined with Western approaches to ecology. Rightly so, as Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities have long been stewards of ecosystems and biodiversity. Indigenous Peoples in particular hold deep, meaning-full and value-laden relationships with nature. However, there has been much discussion on the challenges of doing this "knowledge integration" especially in the context of ecology and potentially addressing the social-ecological crises. There are persistent epistemic hierarchies, power dynamics and differing objetives between actors -especially researchers dominating and designing collaborations-, problems of tokenism, and romanticism of ILK/TEK, among others. Multiple Evidence Base and Two-Eyed Seeing approaches provide promise in avoiding the pitfalls of "validating" ILK/TEK with ecological evidence and doing research "in a good way". However, in the rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence, can these methods be operationalized in large language models and ecological syntheses? How can the slow process of trust-building and the core values of respect and reciprocity -- essential in co-production of knowledge -- be maintained in the age of rapid knowledge production? Or rather, should the question be whether they should be considered at all, if integration will be done poorly and without a focus on values? In the context of South-Central Chile and academic collaborations with the Mapuche Indigenous Peoples, I share some critical considerations of how deep listening -- a skill absent in modern and rapid approaches -- is essential to knowledge-weaving.
Indigenous data sovereignty in computational ecological knowledge integration
(Federica Bocchi, Kian Drew, Tim Alamenciak)
Evidence synthesis in ecology increasingly integrates diverse knowledge sources, yet often overlooks Indigenous data sovereignty and community governance rights. This session presents three interconnected elements.
First, we present recent findings from a Nature Communications paper applying the CARE principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) to evidence synthesis workflows. We outline how CARE commitments can be operationalized through computational and methodological choices in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
Second, we examine Can-Peat as a live case study. Can-Peat demonstrates practical implementation of Indigenous data sovereignty tools — specifically the Local Contexts Labels and Hub — for Canadian peatland research. We share lessons from supporting researchers in applying protocol and permission labels to existing datasets, documenting both successes and ongoing challenges.
Third, we facilitate group discussion on integrating Local Contexts into EcoWeaver, eliciting reflections and ideas on technical and ethical issues. We hope to advance some agenda points on how semantic knowledge structures and AI-based synthesis systems can, especially in the EcoWeaver context, accommodate Indigenous protocols for data access, use, and governance.
The session brings together ecology, Indigenous data governance, philosophy and computer science to ask: What does it look like to build ecological knowledge systems that genuinely center Indigenous authority? We welcome researchers, technologists, and community collaborators interested in responsible, ethical knowledge integration.
Reference Tracking of “Uncertainty” in Ecological Research
(Sarah Tanja Tüzün, Alican Tüzün)
Following the breakout session at the November 2025 EcoWeaver workshop, this proposal asks one question: when "Uncertainty" is grounded in ecologists' first-hand research cases rather than imposed by theory, what does it actually refer to and can a formal ontology recover those referents across different cases, or does it break down?
The group runs in two sessions. In the first session (ideally situated at the start of the workshop), participants will describe their research process, specifically where uncertainty arose. Their verbatim will be the basis for what the word “Uncertainty” refers to. After the recording of their accounts, we will demonstrate the realist referent-analysis pipeline (Progressive Constraint Referent Analysis) on one use case. The authors will then process each account outside the breakout session setting with the demonstrated pipeline extracting only positive statements about what was the case and assembles them into a theory-neutral graph model of the situation, structured with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO 2020), and where useful the Environment Ontology (ENVO). We then project competing definitions of uncertainty onto that model to see which referents each one picks out, and whether the same referent types recur across cases. In the second session (ideally situated at the end of the workshop), the authors present the resulting graphs and projections. Participants then test the result against their own experience: does the model capture the uncertainty they described, and where does it miss?
We expect this break-out sessions to be interesting for a variety of researchers. For example, it offers an ontology-based qualitative method for analyzing subject verbatim for ecologists and the application of metaphysics and argument theory for the philosophers. For computer scientists, it generates empirical data for evaluating whether formal ontology-based methods can represent uncertainty across interdisciplinary cases.