Abstract Conserving biodiversity is a global imperative, yet our capacity to quantify and understand species occurrences has been limited. To help address this challenge, we develop a novel monitoring approach based on deep sequencing of airborne eDNA. When applied to a 34-year archive of weekly filters from an aerosol sampling station in northern Sweden, our methods enabled robust detection of over 2,700 genera across all domains of life and estimates of eDNA catchment areas. Reconstructed time series revealed regional biodiversity declines consistent with contemporary, large-scale transformations of forest composition and structure. Our results show airborne eDNA can reliably monitor biodiversity and underscore the immense latent potential in the thousands of aerosol monitoring stations deployed worldwide. One-Sentence Summary DNA captured from air reveals organisms from all domains of life and their long-term trends.

Airborne eDNA captures three decades of ecosystem biodiversity