A £7 million scheme to set up citizen science trials in 10 river catchments across England is underway in a bid to standardize how volunteers carry out monitoring. Modeled after tests carried out by volunteers in the Chesapeake Bay in the US, the third largest estuary in the world, the project aims to create thousands of volunteer scientists who will monitor their local rivers and provide a grassroots voice for their protection. “What we ultimately want is to have thousands of people volunteering and monitoring their local rivers,” said Simon Browning of the Rivers Trust. “These could be 15-minute surveys or more detailed invertebrate surveys, which give us another layer of data. We are trying to formalize the volunteer structure and standardize tracking so we know the data is reliable. “We want to bring together as many people as possible in all the river basins across the country, so that by the end of the three-year project there is no turning back, we will see volunteers active across the country.” The aim is for monitoring to be complemented by a network of sensors and information to be gathered and shared on a central visualization platform. The project, led by the Rivers Trust and United Utilities, is funded through regulator Ofwat’s first water challenge and includes academic partners. Browning, who set up a citizen science monitoring program for the Westcountry Rivers Trust, which is ongoing, said the Environment Agency’s testing regime was no longer widespread or comprehensive enough. The EA should monitor the chemical quality of rivers, focusing on phosphate, nitrogen, ammonia and dissolved oxygen levels. However, citizen data collected in Devon exposed the holes in the new EA testing scheme, approved last year, which involves randomly selected locations for field tests. “Some of our river basins have gone from being monitored 12 times a year to nothing,” Browning said. “So it’s not so much a question of whether citizen science is better than EA monitoring, but where there is no data at all, citizen science monitoring can empower and engage communities in understanding the issues in their rivers , so they can talk. and protect them. “We want to see real benefits at a local level, with communities in towns and villages taking the local environment by the throat and speaking up for rivers.” Data from the River Creedy in Devon suggests that EA phosphate tests have fallen dramatically over 20 years. In 2000 the EA tested 12 sites for phosphate at Creedy 12 times a year. a total of 144 tests. Testing began to decline in 2014 with the frequency of samples dropping dramatically to a low of four times a year. By last year, tracking of the original 12 sites was completely abandoned. The sites were replaced with randomly selected areas as part of the new EA spot testing system, and 67 phosphate tests were conducted at these new sites in 2021, compared to a high of 189 tests conducted in 2002. The most important stories on the planet. Get all the week’s environmental news – the good, the bad and the must-haves Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. At Creedy one of the new sampling points is upstream of all sewage outfalls, population centers or productive farmland. Critics say the new system is likely to misrepresent the scale of water pollution across the country. “This detailed spatial analysis at the local level [of the Creedy] it reveals a huge shift in the monitoring approach,” Browning said. “Long-term sampling sites have been cleared and abandoned, new ones started with a much reduced sampling regime – one year in five – and at ‘random’ sites that are in no way representative of overall water quality at the water body scale. “ Annual government funding to monitor the activity has been halved in recent years. The agency said the new River Surveillance Network tests were designed to provide a robust assessment of river health nationwide over time. The agency said it welcomes the various emerging citizen science initiatives, which have promised to deliver practical results in a collaborative manner. An Environment Agency spokesman said: “We continue to take tens of thousands of water quality samples every year as part of our work to keep rivers clean. In recent years technological progress and increased efficiency have allowed us to pool our resources and target areas where the environment will benefit the most.”
