NorthDIVeRSITY

Monitoring Biodiversity in Northern Habitats by e-DNA

NorthDIVeRSITY

Monitoring Biodiversity in Northern Habitats by e-DNA

NorthDIVeRSITY

Monitoring biodiversity is very time demanding and costly due to the extensive expertise needed to identify species in different environments and the associated laborious field work. Environmental DNA (eDNA), the detection of DNA traces left in the environment by different organisms, has great potential to become an efficient tool in biodiversity monitoring. However, tests of presently used eDNA methods have shown that eDNA tools have not been designed for northern environments, important northern species are missing. Instead, methods identify temperate species that often do not occur in the north.

The Interreg Aurora funded project NorthDIVeRSITY aims to:
• pool the current know-how of eDNA methods
• identify the biggest needs for eDNA-based monitoring in the north, together with stakeholders
• develop or adapt and validate eDNA-based monitoring approaches for northern ecosystems
• identify the most urgent needs for improving eDNA-based monitoring and produce best practices for different stages of procedures and sample types.

Contact: Katri Kärkkäinen, project manager, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) katri.karkkainen@luke.fi

Photo University of Oulu/Mikko Törmänen

Lead Partner EU
Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)

Project Partner
Umeå University
University of Oulu

TYPE OF PROJECT
Regular project

SUB-AREA
Aurora

PRIORITY
Green and sustainable transition

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE
Nature protection and biodiversity

PROJECT DURATION
2024-07-01 – 2027-06-30

TOTAL PROJECT BUDGET
1 152 246 Euro

EU-FUNDING, INTERREG AURORA
748 960 Euro

STATUS
Ongoing

Social, ecological and economic sustainable development is an overarching goal in the Interreg Aurora Programme. All projects funded by Interreg Aurora contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The NorthDIVeRSITY project contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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