Environmental DNA in the Ecological Risk Assessment of Water Pollution: Methods, Applications, Challenges, and Future...

Area of Science:

• Environmental molecular science
• Aquatic ecology
• Ecotoxicology

Background:

• Conventional water pollution research relies on physicochemical and single-species methods, insufficient for complex ecosystem responses.
• These methods struggle with multiple stressors, community-level changes, and food-web impacts.
• Environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a sensitive, high-throughput, non-invasive alternative for aquatic ecosystem assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent advancements in using eDNA for water pollution research.
• To highlight eDNA's shift towards community- and ecosystem-level ecological interpretation.
• To discuss eDNA's integrative role in biodiversity monitoring, risk assessment, and decision support.

Main Methods:

• Literature review synthesizing progress in eDNA applications for water pollution.
• Emphasis on technical workflows, application domains, and analytical frameworks.
• Discussion of methodological boundaries and challenges.

Main Results:

• eDNA analysis is moving water pollution research beyond single-species toxicity to ecosystem-level interpretation.
• eDNA excels in integrating biodiversity monitoring, ecological risk assessment, and management support.
• Challenges include standardization, quantitative capacity, database limitations, and causal attribution.

Conclusions:

• eDNA provides a robust, ecologically meaningful approach to water pollution assessment.
• Future progress hinges on standardization, quantitative inference, regional databases, and data integration.
• eDNA facilitates more effective, management-relevant decision-making for aquatic ecosystem health.