Marine & urban coast
Los Angeles, USA
Students sample tide pools, kelp beds, and harbor waters to map biodiversity along one of the world's busiest coastlines.
The World Genome Atlas
A living map of life on Earth, drawn sample by sample
Our Atlas is a growing global network of biodiversity observations. Explore where students and partners are collecting environmental DNA, and discover how every local project adds a thread to a shared picture of the living world.
Where we work
Four pilot sites, one shared method
From the Urubamba River winding through Peru’s Sacred Valley to the Pacific coast of California, each cohort reads the eDNA of its own ecosystem using the same field protocols and portable sequencing. Hover a marker to see the site.
Active pilot cohort
Marine, freshwater & terrestrial sampling
Shared protocols, portable Oxford Nanopore sequencing
Pilot locations
Each place reads a different chapter
Local ecosystems, local students, one common scientific framework. Here is where the first observations are being recorded.
Tropical forest & coast
Santa Teresa, Costa Rica
Where dry forest meets the Pacific, cohorts sequence eDNA from rivers and reefs in one of the planet's biodiversity hotspots.
Andean river system
Sacred Valley, Peru
High-altitude rivers carry the eDNA of a unique montane ecosystem, sampled by students alongside their own communities.
Amazon river & rainforest
Santa Clara de Ojeal, Peru
Where Indigenous communities have stewarded ecosystems for generations, and environmental DNA reveals its hidden biodiversity.
From local to global
Every sample sharpens the bigger picture
A single water or soil sample tells a story about one place and one moment. Pooled together and read with shared methods, thousands of those stories begin to reveal patterns that no classroom could see alone.
Because every cohort follows the same protocols, observations stay comparable across oceans, watersheds, and continents. Local data becomes a contribution to a common, open understanding of biodiversity and how it is changing.
6+
Communities participating
600+
eDNA samples collected
50+
Species detected
What comes next
Toward an interactive Atlas
As the network grows, the Atlas will become an interactive platform where anyone can explore biodiversity discoveries, track environmental change, and follow the scientific contributions of students across ecosystems and continents.
Findings you can browse
Species detections, sequencing results, and field notes mapped to the exact places they were found, layer by layer.
Change you can track
Returning to the same sites season after season turns single observations into time series that reveal how ecosystems shift.
Science you can trust
Every entry is student-generated and method-consistent, building an open record that researchers and communities can rely on.