Citizen Science engages members of the public in collecting vital information about the state of our rivers. Only five of our fifty-one waterbodies were classified as good for ecological health by the Environment Agency in 2019, and so we need more information to understand the causes of the failures and to target remedial action.
Citizen Scientists collect valuable information that complements that collected by the Environment Agency and other 'professionals'.
We are developing a catchment-wide approach, whilst also running a series of more local exercises that help us all learn about what methods are the most effective, where to use them, how to support our volunteers, etc.
We are developing our approach to citizen science, and so far we have three basic programmes - Riverfly Monitoring, Outfall Safari, and Weir Walkers. We also collaborate with Yorkshire Water helping them to develop and roll out the River Watch app.
You can read more about each of the citizen science programmes we currently run by clicking on the three images below.
In addition to our own efforts, we keep a very close eye on two major projects seeking to deepen our understanding of citizen science and how to make it more effective and useful.
CaSTCo brings together the expertise and backing from more than 30 organisations nationwide, including community and local partnerships, water companies, environmental charities, regulators, technical experts, academics, and the private sector. Together, we’re demonstrating how citizen science and community monitoring methods can be used alongside professional monitoring to generate and share accessible data of known quality so that the information produced leads to better and more impactful decisions.
The AQuA project focuses on co-creating & using new citizen science tools which measure environmental endpoints not typically studied by citizen science to better understand chemical and microbial contaminants in Yorkshire’s rivers and lakes via excellent, inclusive, and engaged environmental science.
We collect a lot of data through our Citizen Science efforts, and also have access to a wide range of national databases. Here we show how you can get access to the data - beware, this can be a really interesting rabbit hole!
