Webinar: Network for Engineering with Nature presents Nathaniel Marshall: Improving Biological Surveys with Environmental DNA

Engineering with Nature and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have the potential to improve the climate and environment, as well as benefit human health and the economy.  However, it is often difficult to efficiently manage and measure the biological success (or failure) of large-scale NbS projects.  Current methods for measuring success rely on traditional biological surveys, which are time-intensive, costly, and typically do not provide informative data across large spatial and temporal scales.  Therefore, surveying biodiversity with environmental DNA (eDNA), i.e., genetic material shed from all organisms into their surrounding environment, provides a simplistic and cost-effective survey tool to efficiently measure biological communities.  While traditional monitoring tools are biased in their survey catch, for example a fyke net is going to be used to catch fish, eDNA has the potential to capture information on the entire tree of life, everything from bacteria pathogens to endangered leatherback sea turtles.  Environmental DNA has rapidly revolutionized environmental monitoring, and has a wide range of applications, including the early detection of invasive species, determining presence of threatened and endangered species, evaluating harmful pathogens, description of entire fish communities, and providing biodiversity measurements.  This tool can help measure biological success of an engineering with nature project, to ensure long-term ecosystem resilience.

N-EWN Knowledge Series: WEBINAR REGISTRATION