Getting everyone involved in monitoring river health

This article was guest written by Emma Brisdion from The Rivers Trust.

Does your river look healthy? What plants and wildlife can you see? These are just some of the questions The Big River Watch will be asking people across the UK and Ireland in May via its citizen science app, developed by The Rivers Trust, which invites everyone to get involved gathering data on our rivers.  

With river health in decline, the need for more information on our rivers has never been more urgent. Healthy rivers are essential havens for wildlife, and our own wellbeing. We need them to handle our changing climate, and ensure a sustainable water supply for future.  

However the data we have shows that not a single river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health – just 15% of English, and 31% of Northern Irish river stretches reach good ecological health standards. We also know that the monitoring we need to get this data is often sparse and irregular.  

Better, more regular monitoring could give us critical information about our freshwater landscape and help us identify exactly where key issues, such as pollution, affect our rivers, and just how these pressures interact with each other.  

Citizen science can help to provide some of this key information with community-led programmes which monitor flow, water quality and wildlife. These programmes can fill in the growing evidence gap and help to develop the best solutions for improving water quality and the health of rivers.  

Though citizen science can take many forms, some are simple and don’t require training. For example, taking a few moments to connect with your local river, observe, and record what you see – which is exactly what The Big River Watch wants everyone to do between 3rd – 6th May 2024. All you need to do is download the app, find a spot by the river and fill in the survey.  

The in-app survey has been designed by the Catchment Systems Thinking Cooperative (CaSTCo) which is building the first national framework for citizen science and catchment monitoring standards and won the Ofwat Innovation Fund Water Breakthrough Challenge 1.  

More than 5,000 people took part in the first Big River Watch weekend last September, submitting over 3,600 surveys. With almost 60% of participants saying they were new to citizen science, we want to continue to inspire users to connect to their local riverscapes, with their local Rivers Trust, and take part in volunteering activities.  

The next Big River Watch weekend will take place between 3-6 May 2024. Love your local river by contributing to a national data set that will help build a picture of river health. Download the free app on the Apple App Store or with Google Play. 

Find out more about the CaSTCo project.