MSRA Webinar Series - eDNA Provides New Insights Into Stream Restorations feat. Bob Hilderbrand
MSRA is excited to continue our series of webinars featuring leading industry researchers and partners, as we strive to offer opportunities for discussion and promote advancement of the stream restoration science. Visit our website and social media channels for upcoming webinars.
Continuing Education Credits will be offered for the MSRA Webinar Series!
We hope you will join us:
When: Thursday, August 21st
Time: 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Where: GoToWebinar
Following your registration, and prior to the event, you will receive a webinar link from GoToWebinar on the morning of the webinar which will give you access to the webinar.
Will you be attending?
Register Today! Registration will Close at 3pm the Day Before the Webinar.
EVENT DETAILS:
Cost: Free for members, $10 for non-members
Presentation Abstract: Stream restorations may be considered ecologically ineffective despite proper execution because the desired biota have small populations and are difficult to detect. eDNA can supplement and improve biodiversity surveys through improved detection abilities. This talk addresses the question: Can eDNA provide additional insights into measuring restoration effectiveness? The answer is nuanced, but essentially yes; including eDNA with traditional monitoring results in a better description of the aquatic communities and more sensitivity for assessing restoration success. Restored sections had significantly higher overall biodiversity, sensitive taxa, and other attributes compared to upstream unrestored control sections when incorporating eDNA into benthic macroinvertebrate sampling, whereas no differences were found when using only traditional monitoring methods. In contrast, restoration outcomes when using fish were similar between eDNA and traditional methods. eDNA detected significantly more fish and benthic macroinvertebrate taxa than the traditional monitoring methods.
Many entities are exploring eDNA for monitoring and assessment, and interest will increase given the study findings. Adding eDNA to aquatic monitoring and assessment should be encouraged because it substantively adds to the biodiversity sampled and can uncover patterns not detectable with traditional monitoring. But it must be used with some cautions as eDNA does not completely replace traditional monitoring. Measureable biological recovery can occur in stream restorations, but the degree of improvement is modest.
Presenter's Abstract: Bob Hilderbrand is an ecologist at the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg.
