Biodiversity constitutes a fundamental basis for ecosystem stability, productivity, and long-term sustainability. It is represented not only by species richness but also by genetic composition, community structure, organismal distribution, interspecific interactions, and ecological functions operating across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Consequently, biodiversity monitoring is essential for assessing ecosystem health and detecting environmental changes at an early stage. This need has become increasingly urgent because ecosystems are currently exposed to multiple pressures, including climate change, pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation, land-use intensification, natural-resource exploitation, and the introduction of invasive alien species. Freshwater, coastal, marine, and agricultural ecosystems are particularly vulnerable because environmental disturbances can rapidly alter species distributions, community composition, ecological interactions, and ecosystem functioning.
Biodiversity monitoring has traditionally relied on visual surveys, organism collection, trapping, netting, observation of biological traces, and morphological identification. Although these methods remain scientifically valuable, their implementation is often time-consuming, costly, dependent on taxonomic expertise, and constrained by the accessibility of sampling locations. Such limitations are particularly evident in remote areas, inaccessible habitats, and environmentally complex ecosystems. Moreover, rare, nocturnal, cryptic, small-bodied, or low-abundance species may remain undetected through conventional field surveys. Evaluations of biodiversity indicators have also demonstrated that monitoring systems face broader challenges related to data availability, temporal sensitivity, spatial scalability, and methodological standardization. These limitations highlight the need for monitoring approaches that are more sensitive, efficient, reproducible, and applicable across extensive geographical areas and repeated observation periods.
In ecosystem-health assessment, eDNA can support the detection of indicator species, invasive organisms, rare taxa, changes in community composition, pollution effects, habitat degradation, and ecological restoration outcomes. Its development through metabarcoding, metagenomics, and metatranscriptomics also creates opportunities to examine taxonomic diversity, functional genes, biological activity, and relationships between communities and environmental conditions. Nevertheless, eDNA-based monitoring remains subject to contamination, genetic-material degradation, false-positive and false-negative detections, primer bias, incomplete reference databases, and insufficiently standardized protocols. Environmental DNA should therefore be regarded as a complementary approach that strengthens, rather than entirely replaces, conventional ecological surveys. Considering both its considerable potential and its methodological challenges, the seminar entitled “Environmental DNA in Monitoring Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health” is important for advancing understanding of eDNA principles, analytical methods, data interpretation, standardization, and practical applications. It also provides a strategic forum for researchers, academics, conservation-area managers, and policymakers to exchange knowledge and promote more accurate, efficient, and evidence-based biodiversity monitoring, ecosystem assessment, and conservation decision-making.
Sub-themes:
- Genetic diversity
- Diversity of species
- Diversity of ecosystems
- Ethnobiology
- Life Science and Technology
Time and Place
Online Via Zoom
Date: November 14, 2026
Time: 08:00 to 12.00 (Jakarta, GMT+7)
Note: All manuscripts relating to the sub-themes can be submitted.