Mobile environmental DNA collection and near-real-time data delivery from remote field sites across the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.
The Challenge
Collecting environmental DNA from remote, hard-to-reach locations is expensive and logistically complex. Deploying your own team — lab assistants, data scientists, vehicles, equipment, permits — for weeks at a time is often impossible to justify.
Critical biodiversity data goes uncollected. Research timelines slip. Monitoring gaps widen.
TerraTrace exists to remove that overhead. We deploy to the location, run the sampling and on-site processing ourselves, and return the data to you.
Our Services
From sample collection in the field through on-site processing to data delivery.
We deploy overland to remote and off-grid locations across the Iberian Peninsula and beyond. Our expeditions persist for 1–6 weeks, enabling repeat sampling from the same sites across different time periods — capturing temporal biodiversity patterns that single-visit sampling misses.
Samples are processed on-site using professional-grade protocols and portable sequencing technology (Oxford Nanopore). No waiting for samples to reach a distant lab. No degradation in transit. No cold-chain logistics to manage.
Sequencing data is transmitted from the field via satellite link (Starlink), allowing you to review results, adjust collection parameters, and redirect sampling effort during the expedition rather than after it has ended.
The Process
Tell us what you need: target species, habitat types, sampling sites, duration, and data formats. We take care of permits, logistics, equipment, and planning.
The self-contained mobile laboratory travels overland to the target location. We set up camp and begin systematic eDNA collection according to the agreed protocol.
Samples are collected, processed, and sequenced on-site. Data streams back to you in near real-time. You can review preliminary results and adapt the sampling plan as the expedition progresses.
At the end of the expedition you receive the dataset, with metadata, field notes, and a written expedition report.
Who We Work With
We work with organisations across academia, industry, and government who need eDNA data from sites that are difficult to reach with conventional fieldwork.
Access remote sampling sites without the overhead of organising your own expedition. Ideal for longitudinal biodiversity studies, PhD fieldwork components, and multi-site research programmes.
Deliver eDNA data to your clients from locations that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive. Subcontract your remote fieldwork to us and focus on analysis and reporting.
Meet EU biodiversity monitoring obligations — including the Nature Restoration Law — with reliable, repeatable eDNA data from protected and hard-to-access areas.
Service Notes
The service is built around the operational realities of remote eDNA fieldwork.
We carry the laboratory equipment, power generation, water, provisions, and satellite communications needed to run an expedition without local infrastructure or on-the-ground support.
Because data is returned during the expedition rather than after it, the sampling plan can be adjusted as results come in — redirecting effort when something unexpected appears, or adding replicates where they are needed.
ISO-aligned standard operating procedures, chain-of-custody documentation, and quality-assurance steps appropriate for regulatory and research use.
We are based in Spain and operate across the Iberian Peninsula, with working knowledge of the region's habitats, access conditions, and regulatory environment.
Why This Matters
For most of its history, humanity has made consequential decisions about the living world with anecdote, periodic surveys, and a handful of satellites watching the things satellites can see. The biological dimension of the Earth system — the communities and interactions whose dynamics actually generate ecological resilience — has remained almost invisible to systematic observation. And the places where it matters most are precisely the places traditional fieldwork rarely reaches.
Environmental DNA changes that. A litre of stream water, a soil core, a filter exposed to forest air: each carries a legible record of the organisms whose presence and decline shape what a landscape can become. For the first time, continuous, high-resolution biological monitoring is technically possible — not as a one-off census, but as a sustained sensorium for the living planet.
TerraTrace exists to take that sensorium into the regions it currently misses. Every expedition we run is a contribution to a perceptual capacity that humanity is only beginning to build: a record of the biological fabric of the Iberian Peninsula, returned in real time, archived against shifting baselines, and integrable with the wider Earth observation infrastructure that already exists.
"Every reduction in biodiversity is a quantifiable reduction in the Earth system's capacity to adapt — to reorganise under changed conditions, to find new viable configurations when current ones become untenable."
— Dr. Richard Carter, Planetary Resilience: Sustaining the Distributed Cognition of the Living Planet (forthcoming)
This is the argument our founder makes at length in his forthcoming book. It is also the reason this company exists. We treat each project as a research collaboration, not a delivery — because the data it produces has a longer life and a wider obligation than any single contract.
Coverage Area
TerraTrace is based in Spain and currently operates across the Iberian Peninsula — from the wetlands of Doñana to the mountain streams of the Pyrenees, from the cork oak forests of the Alentejo to the volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands.
We're expanding into Northern Europe and North Africa as our operational model matures.
Use Cases
The mobile expedition service supports a range of environmental monitoring and research applications.
Biodiversity assessment and monitoring
Invasive species detection and early warning
Water quality and aquatic ecosystem health
Protected species surveys (EU Habitats Directive)
Environmental impact assessments
Soil microbiome and terrestrial ecology
Longitudinal and temporal ecological studies
If your project involves eDNA from a site that is difficult to reach, it is worth a conversation.
About Us
TerraTrace was founded by Dr. Richard Carter, a complexity scientist whose work on critical technology and security challenges has been drawn on by the UN, the BBC, and The Economist.
After three decades analysing complex systems for policy audiences, he became increasingly concerned that environmental decisions are routinely made with insufficient data about the natural systems they affect.
TerraTrace grew out of that concern — combined with military expedition training and ultramarathon experience in remote environments — as a practical attempt to close part of the gap.
Get in Touch
Whether you are scoping a research project, preparing a tender, or exploring whether eDNA fits your work, get in touch and we will reply.
Thank you for your enquiry. We'll review your project details and get back to you within 2 business days.