DNASense – From gene to landscapes: development of environmental impact assessment tools for marine biodiversity monitoring using eDNA and remote sensing techniques
Biodiversa +
In recent decades, many ecosystems, including coastal marine benthic habitats, have experienced a loss of biodiversity. This decline in benthic diversity has a significant impact on the functioning of coastal ecosystems, especially on services such as water quality. Monitoring programs are essential to understand the consequences of biodiversity loss and to guide management and conservation efforts. However, for practical and economic reasons, traditional methods often overlook microscopic communities, the most diverse component of marine ecosystems.
Two recent technological advances offer opportunities to overcome these limitations: high-throughput sequencing of environmental and community DNA allows the monitoring of previously overlooked ecological communities; and remote sensing can use satellite data to infer macroalgal distributions at large spatial and temporal scales. To effectively integrate these developments into biodiversity monitoring frameworks, it is crucial to develop practical indicators that can be applied within existing policy frameworks.
Line of action:
Knowledge generation and managementStatus:
En ejecuciónExecution date:
2024End date:
2027DNASense aims to advance, integrate and harmonize the use of electronic DNA, community DNA and remote sensing techniques to monitor multiple dimensions of benthic biodiversity.
Its main objectives include the development of new biodiversity assessment indicators from eDNA datasets, the cost-effective improvement of benthic ecosystem monitoring, and the integration of these indicators into policy implementation tools within the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
Biodiversity trends and drivers in poorly known groups such as meiofauna, marine fungi and benthic prokaryotes will be investigated, along with less studied aspects such as genetic and functional diversity. We will use long-read sequencing technology for direct sequencing of mitochondrial DNA (mitoometagenomics), addressing taxonomic bias and classification problems associated with high-throughput methods such as metabarcoding. We will also use remote sensing methods to quantitatively map macrophytobenthos on the seafloor, comparing them with existing visual census programs.
DNASense – From gene to landscapes: development of environmental impact assessment tools for marine biodiversity monitoring using eDNA and remote sensing techniques
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