eDNA and DNA for Woodland ecological monitoring
Advancing woodland monitoring through DNA and eDNA technologies to support biodiversity assessment and forest resilience.
Overview
Evaluation of the ecological condition of British woodlands and how it changes over time is essential in order to make decisions in support of biodiversity and ecological resilience of forest ecosystems at national and regional scales. This assessment also underpins national and international monitoring obligations and depends on the ability to measure forest biodiversity accurately.
Measurement of key indicators of forest ecological condition can be time-consuming, expensive, invasive and limited in scale. DNA and environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding are techniques that are emerging as time and cost-effective alternatives to traditional approaches.
They represent viable methods for incorporation into large-scale woodland ecological condition assessments, such as the National Forest Inventory (NFI) and other monitoring schemes, thus providing detailed and accessible biodiversity data at the national and regional scales for decision-making.
In this collection
Funders
Funded by the UK Government through Defra’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment programme (NCEA).
