London and York University, Toronto, Canada, has discovered that thousands of ambient air quality monitoring stations around the world are unwittingly recording more than just atmospheric pollutants and dust: they are also likely collecting biodiversity data in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA). Until now it was thought that the infrastructure for monitoring biodiversity at national and global scales does not exist.
Since almost every country has some kind of air pollution monitoring system or network, either government owned or private, and in many cases both. This could solve a global problem of how to measure biodiversity at a massive scale.
