Hyperspectral remote sensing and environmental DNA for assessing soil bacterial alpha diversity in temperate forests

Environmental DNA (eDNA) provides a powerful tool for uncovering the diversity of microbial taxa in environmental samples, such as soil. Despite its potential, our understanding of bacterial community spatial variation across large landscapes remains limited due to sparse field sampling. This research introduces a novel approach combining eDNA data with high-resolution image spectroscopy from the DESIS satellite, integrated with Gaussian Process Regression, to estimate bacterial alpha diversity in the Bavarian Forest National Park. The resulting maps, generated at a 30-meter resolution, explain up to 50% of the variation in bacterial diversity. The study underscores the influence of ecological drivers on bacterial alpha diversity and offers new insights into the distribution of microbial communities in the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany. These findings demonstrate the potential of integrating eDNA and remote sensing techniques to explore microbial diversity across diverse and expansive ecosystems.