The South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve has funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDA-FS) to study the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring methods to monitor biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems. The project will use DNA filtered from water samples to map distributions of western brook lamprey and Pacific lamprey at over 100 sites in the Coos, Coquille, and Siuslaw Watersheds.
Our first prototype group of Citizen science volunteers participating in this project has begun testing these methods for further lamprey research!