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