Earth is in trouble.

Alongside the collapse of its climate system, the unraveling of the planet’s living fabric poses a threat the human species may not survive — certainly not human ‘civilization’, such as it is.

Earth’s biosphere is now in the throes of a mass extinction event rivaling anything the planet has experienced since life emerged, 3.8 billion years ago. An estimated million species are believed to be on the brink of extinction.

Most will vanish into oblivion before they’ve even been identified.

In the Netherlands, a groundbreaking project aims to reverse this trend.

ARISE-Biodiversity is a joint project of the University of Amsterdam, the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, the University of Twente, and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, in the Dutch city of Leiden. Its aim: to identify all species of multicellular life in the Netherlands, as a basis for protecting them, and as a model for conservationists around the world.

Among ARISE’s techniques and tools: DNA barcoding of air, water, and other environmental samples gathered by researchers and citizen scientists, advanced audio, video, photographic, and radar monitoring, and AI-driven meta analysis of resulting data sets, incomprehensibly huge in size.

This past March hundreds gathered in Leiden for the fourth in a series of ARISE days.

Elaine van Ommen Kloeke is ARISE’s program manager. Listen to her in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Cootes Paradise (David Kattenburg)

Since the dawn of civilization, nothing has fascinated humans more than the dizzying variety of life around them.

Aristotle was among the first natural historians. Pliny’s Naturalis Historia is the Roman Empire’s largest surviving work.

The collection, description and preservation of living things has come a long way since then. Today, biologists use hi-tech tools to collect creatures, and DNA barcoding technology to identify them.

Listen to a story about this in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Kevin Beentjes and his barcode reader at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden (David Kattenburg)

It’s a living web beneath our feet – a tangled network of microscopic tubes weaving through the soil, pulsating with nutrients, tying the roots of trees and other plants into vast networks.

Mycorrhizal fungi they’re called. Most plants rely on them entirely.

But, mycorrhizal fungi do more than just feed plants. They cycle carbon from atmosphere to soil, regulating Earth’s climate – and they face a host of threats.

Soil scientists and mycologists have come together to protect fungal networks, and are calling on citizens to help out. Researchers Toby Kiers and Vincent Merckx have devoted their careers to studying these astonishing underground networks. Listen to them in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Special thanks to Bart Braun and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, in Leiden, the Netherlands, for the audio track of Toby Kiers’ presentation.

Toby Kiers (Credit: David Meulenbeld)