California Biodiversity

Adventure Scientists seek outdoor enthusiasts to volunteer for soil and insect sample collection for California Biodiversity. This project aims to explore and document insects and soil biodiversity, as part of All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory that supports the California 30X30 Pathways Strategy (to conserve 30% of the state of California by 2030).

Adventure Scientists is partnering with California Institute for Biodiversity to achieve a better understanding of biodiversity interaction and influence on humans, and expand their biodiversity database. This data may help inform conservation policy decisions and combat threats to biodiversity from human encroachment, climate change, and other devastations such as wildfires and droughts.

From September 2024 to August 2025, volunteers will apply online to participate in soil eDNA collection, insect collection, or both.

• Volunteers complete online training and receive an equipment kit.
• Volunteers identify a location and travel to different sample sites across California.
• Volunteers collect data!
• For soil samples, volunteers use gloves and a shovel to collect vials of topsoil and subsoil.
• For insects, volunteers use a net and aspirator to catch insects and place them into vials.

Collected samples are shipped by volunteers to partner laboratories to be processed/ studied

The exciting benefits from these projects are numerous. Adventurers benefit by contributing to meaningful conservation research in areas that they visit. Additionally, scientists benefit from efficiently attaining data that previously would have been hard or impossible to acquire.