Novel use of air quality monitoring stations to assess biodiversity

The accelerating loss of biodiversity and increasing rate of species extinction is a major threat to ecosystems around the globe. Quantifying these losses at a large scale is a huge challenge, partly due to a lack of the required infrastructure.

NPL sampled particulate matter on filters at its Teddington site, and used samples taken from an ambient air quality monitoring station. Working with Queen Mary University London and York University (Canada) to analyse the samples for eDNA, over 180 different plants, fungi, insects, mammals, birds, amphibians, and other groups of animals were detected. The findings of the work have been published in Current Biology (subscription required - content behind paywall).

The study could be a gamechanger for tracking and monitoring biodiversity. Many countries across the world have air pollution monitoring networks, so this work has the potential to solve a global problem of how to measure biodiversity at a massive scale.

New discovery for tracking global biodiversity