Scientists, politicians, and popular media have long argued that the continued degradation of ecosystems will negatively affect human well-being. Despite the salient attention and high-stakes policy interventions, there exists little empirical evidence on how industrial activities impact the ecological system. This project will measure the ecological impacts of industrial production in China, addressing key data and identification challenges. Given the scarcity and bias in traditional biodiversity data, the project leverages environmental DNA (eDNA) from water and soil samples to create more accurate, first-hand biodiversity metrics. To establish causality, researchers will collect samples upstream and downstream of major polluting factories and assess spatial discontinuities in ecological outcomes, using natural environmental features to control for confounding factors. This approach, combined with data on industrial activity and emissions, aims to provide rigorous, scalable evidence on how industrialization affects ecosystems, informing both science and policy.
