Tim Alamenciak

Biodiversity Restoration & Conservation Knowledge Systems Community Engagement

PhD, Social and Ecological Sustainability, University of Waterloo (2024) · Postdoctoral Fellow, Carleton University · Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo · Research Fellow, St. Jerome’s University · English / French (B2)

I study biodiversity restoration and conservation, focusing on building evidence for good decisions and mobilizing evidence with practitioners who can use it. I build the tools and partnerships that close the distance between research and practice. My work spans from the Canadian prairies, where I model what happens to land after a conservation contract expires, to the knowledge graphs that make scattered ecological evidence usable, to the neighbourhood groups whose volunteers do a significant portion of the restoration in this country.

Guiding questions

• Biodiversity Restoration and Conservation: What are the socio-ecological legacies of short-term conservation agreements?
  Current Focus: Spatio-temporal modeling of term agreement outcomes and a participant analysis with Ducks Unlimited Canada to determine how temporary contracts shape long-term biodiversity outcomes.
• Knowledge Systems: How can digital platforms turn fragmented ecological data into evidence practitioners can act on?
  Current Focus: Developing EcoWeaver, a semantic framework for synthesizing diverse ecological data streams into accessible, community-ready formats.
• Community Engagement: What mechanisms facilitate the transition from passive engagement to durable community capacity?
  Current Focus: A pilot initiative using participatory scenario planning to co-design restoration strategies between community groups and municipalities.

My research across three interconnected areas has been supported by $607,000 in awarded research funding as PI or co-PI across 11 competitions. See Research for details.

Peer-reviewed

• 2026 — Courtney D. Robichaud, Christine Beaudoin, Tim Alamenciak, Jaimie Vincent, Steven J. Cooke, Vivian M. Nguyen, Richard Schuster, Nathan Young, Joseph R. Bennett. Data, politics, and funding cause uncertainty for conservation practitioners
  Conservation Science and Practice.
• 2026 — Ryan Y. Hodgson, Steven A. Robinson, Amelie C. Boutin, Felix K. Chan, Joseph R. Bennett, Rachel T. Buxton, J. Harry Caufield, Dalal E.L. Hanna, Tim Alamenciak. Assessing the Effectiveness of Ontology-Grounded AI Term Extraction Using OntoGPT for Environmental Evidence Synthesis (pdf)
  Environmental Evidence.
• 2026 — Steven J. Cooke, Kevin A. Adeli, Trina Rytwinski, Andrew N. Kadykalo, Jennifer Provencher, Vivian Nguyen, Joseph Bennett, Christina Davy, Rachel Buxton, Dalal Hanna, Jesse C. Vermaire, Sean Landsman, Nathan Young, Graeme Auld, Danika Littlechild, Jennifer M. Holzer, Meagan Harper, Andrew Howarth, Tim Alamenciak, Lauren Lawson, Jayme Lewthwaite, Erin E. Stukenholtz, Paul A. Smith, Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis, Josie Hughes, Barbara Frei, Amanda Martin, Amie Black, Richard Pither, Douglas MacNearney, Kristen Lalla, Carmen Galan-Acedo and Christopher Cvitanovic. Supporting frontline workers in the biodiversity crisis by empowering and enabling practitioners to embrace conservation evidence
  Socio-Ecological Practice Research.
• 2025 — Jeffrey O. Hanson, Jenny L. McCune, Tim Alamenciak, Joseph R. Bennett. Increasing the credibility of conservation plans through citizen science (pdf)
  Biological Conservation.
• 2025 — Josie South, Roxana Barbulescu, Rafael L. Macedo, Camille L. Musseau, Simone Guareschi, Tim Alamenciak, et al.. Parallels between biological invasions and human migration are flawed and undermine both disciplines. Response to Ahmed et al (pdf)
  BioScience.
• 2024 — Tim Alamenciak, Stephen D. Murphy. What makes a convivial community tool? Investigating grassroots ecological restoration (pdf) Listen
  Ecology & Society.
• 2024 — Tim Alamenciak, Stephen D. Murphy. Motivations for Volunteers to Participate in Ecological Restoration: A Systematic Map (pdf) Listen
  Restoration Ecology.
• 2023 — Tim Alamenciak, Dorian Pomezanski, Nancy Shackelford, Stephen D. Murphy, Steven J. Cooke, Line Rochefort, Sonia Voicescu, Eric Higgs. Ecological Restoration Research in Canada: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How? (pdf) Listen
  FACETS.
• 2022 — William J. Sutherland, Jake M. Robinson, David C. Aldridge, Tim Alamenciak, Matthew Armes, Nina Baranduin, Andrew J. Bladon, et al.. Creating Testable Questions in Practical Conservation (pdf)
  Conservation Evidence Journal.
• 2020 — Anita Lazurko, Tim Alamenciak, Lowine Stella Hill, Ella-Kari Muhl, Augustine Kwame Osei, Dorian Pomezanski, Kyle Schang, Dilruba Fatima Sharmin. What Will a PhD Look Like in the Future?
  World Futures Review.

In progress

• Tim Alamenciak, Amy Bachhuber, Joseph R. Bennett, Steven J. Cooke, Kian L. Drew, Daniel Dylewsky, Emily McKnight, Pat Moore, Ana Hernandez Martinez De La Riva, Bronwyn Rayfield. “Machines in the loop: Challenges and opportunities for environmental evidence synthesis research in the artificial intelligence era”
  FACETS (Under review).
• Federica Bocchi, Aline Potiron, Eleonore Slabbert, Tim Alamenciak, Anika Grose, Birgitta Konig-Ries, Lotte Korell, Carlos Santana, Tina Heger. “Operationalizing the CARE principles in evidence synthesis for ecology and conservation”
  Nature Communications (Under review).
• Tim Alamenciak, Stephen D. Murphy. “Which Aspects of Restoration Project Organization Affect Volunteer Engagement in Community-Based Initiatives?”
  Restoration Ecology (Under review).

Pre-prints and conference papers

• 2025 — Lars Vogt, Birgitta Konig-Ries, Tim Alamenciak, Joshua I. Brian, Carlos Alberto Arnillas, Lotte Korell, Robert Fruehstueckl, Tina Heger. A Framework for FAIR and CLEAR Ecological Data and Knowledge
  arXiv.

My full publication history is listed in the CV.

My research operates at three interconnected scales: understanding how conservation mechanisms shape landscapes and communities, building equitable, accessible knowledge systems that make ecological evidence usable, and studying how people engage with biodiversity restoration and conservation work on the ground.

Conservation mechanisms & landscape outcomes

What happens after a temporary conservation agreement expires? Working with Ducks Unlimited Canada through an NSERC Alliance grant ($355K), I co-lead research on the ecological and social legacies of term agreements — combining spatio-temporal modelling with landowner interviews to understand how short-term contracts shape long-term landscape connectivity and stewardship behaviour.

Knowledge systems for ecology

Ecological evidence is fragmented across disciplines, scales, and formats. I develop computational tools — ontologies, knowledge graphs, and semantic frameworks — that integrate this evidence into systems practitioners can actually use. Projects include the Ecolink Model Ontology (ELMO), which I lead for the Restoration Futures Lab, and the Toolkit for Restoration Ecology Knowledge (TReK), alongside the platform below.

Evidence synthesis & community engagement

I have led the first systematic map of ecological restoration research in Canada and developed frameworks for understanding volunteer motivations and organizational effectiveness in restoration programs. Current work includes evaluating AI-assisted evidence synthesis tools (OntoGPT) and piloting participatory scenario planning to co-design restoration strategies between community groups and municipalities.

Key collaborators: Bennett Lab (Carleton) · Restoration Futures Lab (UVic)

• 2026 The enduring benefits of short-term conservation agreements
  Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution Annual Conference
• 2026 Causal Mosaic Schema: Encoding Causal Claims in Ecological Literature as Machine-Actionable Knowledge Graphs
  TDWG 2026 Conference
• 2026 AI and decision support tools for land trusts
  Ontario Land Trust Alliance Conference
• 2025 Ecolink: Towards a Knowledge Graph Schema for Complex Environmental Systems
  EcoDL Workshop at the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries conference, Tampere, Finland
• 2025 Toolkit for Restoration Ecology Knowledge (TReK) Invited
  AI Colloquium, Lamarr Institute, Dortmund, Germany
• 2025 Three stories of restoration and conservation engagement Invited
  School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability Salon; Carleton BIOL 5534; Knowledge Mobilization Community of Practice; University of Waterloo PSCI 303
• 2024 Boots & Suits: Mobilizing knowledge in ecosystem restoration
  Society for Ecological Restoration North American Conference, Vancouver
• 2024 People-powered ecosystem restoration Invited
  University of Arizona, Gornish Lab
• 2024 Mapping evidence to theory in ecology: Addressing the challenges of generalization and causality Invited
  Residency at Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University
• 2024 How to recruit and retain more volunteers Invited
  Webinar for Carolinian Canada

Full list of presentations in the CV.

Boards & professional service

• Board Member at-large, Environmental Studies Association of Canada (ESAC) (2024 - Current)
• Board Member, Emerging Leaders for Biodiversity (ELB) (2024 - 2025)
• Board Member, Society for Ecological Restoration (Ontario) (2020 - 2021)

Institutional & community committees

• Member, Knowledge Mobilization Community of Practice (UW) (2025 - Current)
• Member, Natural Spaces Working Group (UW) (2025 - Current)
• Faculty liaison, Society for Ecological Restoration UW Student Chapter (SER-UW) (2023 - Current)
• Land Stewardship Committee Member, Ignatius Jesuit Centre (2024 - 2025)
• Writing Cafe Organizer, Weekend Warriors Writing Cafe, University of Waterloo (2021 - 2022)
• Member, Ecological and Environmental Advisory Committee, Region of Waterloo (2019 - 2021)

Peer review

Reviewer for Restoration Ecology, Sustainability Science, Society & Natural Resources, Ecology & Society, People & Nature.

Grant review

• Digital Research Alliance - EDIA Champions Program
• Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) - Community Resilience RFP

Before entering academia I spent a decade as a working journalist — a staff reporter at the Toronto Star, then a digital media producer at TVO, where I created and directed Climate Watch Shorts, a documentary series on climate impacts in Ontario, and launched TVO’s first podcast. Daily deadline reporting is where I learned to find out what a specialist actually means, and to say it to someone who has ninety seconds. That is the same problem my research works on, and it shapes how I design studies, tools and partnerships.

Selected journalism

• TVO author archive — Climate Watch Shorts episodes and reporting.
• Climate Watch Shorts — the full documentary series.
• Muck Rack profile — Toronto Star and Globe and Mail bylines.
• Cycles of Use on the Landscape (NiCHE, 2021) — essay on relationships, Land Back and long-term restoration planning, in the Environmental Histories of the Future series.

Science communication initiatives

• GLELxSciComm (2025) — Organized a full-day science communication workshop for 40 students and staff at Carleton, featuring journalism faculty, The Narwhal's Carl Meyer, and a panel of community environmental organizations.
• From Abstract to Action (2024) — Organized a three-part speaker series for the Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Lab, featuring an MP, a national journalist, and a lobbyist on translating research into policy.

Audio versions of selected publications are available on ResearchEquals.

My approach is explicitly transdisciplinary: I draw on methods and perspectives from ecology, social science, data science, and the humanities to create learning experiences that mirror the complexity of real-world environmental problem-solving. I emphasize experiential learning wherever possible — fieldwork, community partnerships, and applied research projects that give students concrete skills alongside conceptual depth.

A decade as a journalist shapes how I teach science communication. I design assignments that push students to translate technical findings for non-specialist audiences — treating that skill as fundamental, not supplementary.

Courses taught

• ENVS 205 - Sustainability: The Future We Want — Sessional Lecturer, University of Waterloo, Spring 2026
• BIOL 5512 - Advances in Applied Ecology — Course Mentor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Fall 2024
  Led a group's intensive research project. See resulting publication Hodgson et al. 2026
• ERS 253 - Communities and Sustainability — Sessional Lecturer, University of Waterloo, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, Winter 2024 (38 students; in-person)
  • Re-designed course including entirely new readings, structure, assignments, lectures, and online space through LEARN.
  • Incorporated inquiry-based learning and professional guest lectures into course materials.
• ERS 340 - Ecosystem Assessment — Teaching Assistant, University of Waterloo, Spring 2021 (31 students; online)
• ERS 401 - Translational Ecology — Teaching Assistant, University of Waterloo, Winter 2021 (40 students; online)
• ERS 335 - Ecological Restoration — Teaching Assistant, University of Waterloo, Fall 2020 (40 students; online)
• multiple courses — Teaching Assistant, University of Waterloo, Sept 2019 - Aug 2020 (ENVS 200, ERS 402, ERS 300)

Plus invited guest lectures in ten-plus courses across ecology, environmental studies, political science, and peace and conflict studies at Waterloo and Carleton.

Research supervision

• Honours thesis (Kacey Hammond), Bachelor of Science — Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Fall 2025 & Winter 2026
• Honours thesis (Logan Rehberg), Bachelor of Science — Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Spring 2024
  See resulting publication Alamenciak et al. 2026.
• Ongoing graduate mentorship at Carleton University, the University of Waterloo, and St. Jerome’s University, including thesis committee membership.

Teaching qualifications & professional development

• MobilizeU Knowledge Mobilization Certificate (2025, Simon Fraser University)
• Knowledge Graphs - Foundations and Applications (2024, Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany)
• Mental Health Literacy Certificate Program (2024, University of Waterloo)
• Certificate in University Teaching (2021 - 2022, University of Waterloo)
• Fundamentals of University Teaching (2021, University of Waterloo)
• Ontario Master Naturalist Certificate (2020, Lakehead University)
• Data-Driven Ecological Synthesis Summer School (2020)
• Ontario Benthic Biomonitoring Network (OBBN) Certificate (2019)
• Common Cause for Conservation Values-Based Communications Training (2019)
• Certificate in University Teaching Award (2022, $1,000, University of Waterloo)