Thank you so much.
Mr. Chairman and respected MPs, members of the science and technology committee, thank you for providing me this opportunity to speak about the important topic of citizen science.
I speak here as the scientific lead of a highly collaborative project called STREAM, which stands for sequencing the rivers for environmental assessment and monitoring. This project was launched in 2019 and is deeply rooted in over 20 years of research and development in Canada and internationally.
My academic base is the University of Guelph, at which I'm a professor of molecular biodiversity and also the chief scientific officer of the centre for biodiversity genomics, which has led the world in the application of DNA-based tools for biodiversity discovery. This week, we celebrated the 20-year anniversary of the introduction of DNA bar-coding and the bar code of life program.
DNA bar-coding uses species-specific regions of the genome for distinguishing species. Under our guidance, the scientific community has now sequenced over 10 million specimens from about 400,000 species, providing a powerful biological database for species identification in a range of settings from food safety and security to species conservation.
We have also pioneered the bulk identification of species in biological communities in aquatic ecosystems using a technique known as environmental DNA metabarcoding, which uses high-throughput sequencing platforms. This approach is transforming biodiversity monitoring in support of water quality assessments.
Given its large land area and significant remoteness, Canada represents a major challenge for river biomonitoring. Climate change and various development projects pose more challenges for timely and effective biomonitoring programs. Current tools are not accurate and scalable. Over 15 years ago, I started collaborating with scientists from Environment Canada and Parks Canada on utilizing DNA-based biodiversity tools for addressing a chronic lack of biomonitoring data. However, I soon realized that a major bottleneck we are facing is related to generating samples from rivers across Canada on a timely basis.
Together with collaborators from Environment Canada, WWF Canada and Living Lakes Canada, which has representatives here today, we launched STREAM in 2019 with funding from a competition presented by Genome Canada. We developed a modular program whereby community groups, including several indigenous communities, became partners in STREAM.
To ensure effective engagement of community members, we developed a standard training module by taking advantage of the CABIN framework. All our citizen scientists are certified for gathering samples and various site metadata using a standard operating procedure. We have engaged over 100 individuals from many communities, and they have collectively gathered over 1,400 samples from watersheds across Canada.
Our objective has been to generate biodiversity reports for community groups in less than two months. We have generated over 70 reports thus far and have also established an online knowledge portal with various tools for visualizing and reporting data. Because STREAM samples are collected by local communities, our program continued even during the pandemic.
Since our Genome Canada funding ran out, STREAM is now partially supported by a grant from Environment Canada. We also have philanthropy funding from the Illumina foundation, an American genomics company.
Given the importance of generating knowledge to sustain Canadian freshwater ecosystems, we are hoping to build a more sustainable funding model for STREAM and to expand the approach for other taxonomic groups such as fish and vertebrates, as well as hosts and vectors of infectious agents such as emerging zoonotic viruses.
I would be happy to address any questions. Thank you.