SmartRivers - Aquatic invertebrate occurrence and pressure biometric scores in English, Welsh and Scottish rivers

WildFish

Description

SmartRivers - a member of the Riverfly Plus citizen science family - enables volunteer hubs, supported by an IFM certified training scheme, to monitor the water quality in their rivers to a near-professional standard. Aquatic invertebrate species and abundances are obtained from 3 minute kick-sweep sampling to Environment Agency guidelines. Samples are preserved in Industrial Denatured Alcohol and either sent away for professional identification or analysed by the volunteers. The species lists produced from the analysis are plugged into a biometric calculator to produce scores against various stress types, including sediment, phosphorus, flow, chemicals and organic pollution. All new sites added get a professional benchmark survey in spring and autumn before they are monitored by volunteers.

Additional information about the dataset can be found on https://wildfish.org/project/smart-rivers/. The main database is also viewable at: https://wildfish.cartographer.io. Please email smartrivers@wildfish.org to request a login.

Purpose

The SmartRivers project provides data on biodiversity and the pressures impacting wild fish. It equips volunteer hubs to perform surveys and identify invertebrates to the highest taxonomic level possible at designated local sites. The results provide crucial information about the health of the UK's rivers, which are used as local case studies in the national water policy work undertaken by WildFish.

Data quality

For volunteer identified samples, one sample per hub is sent for professional analysis.

Methods

3 minute kick sweep sampling, to Environment Agency guidelines.

Citation

WildFish ([Insert download year]). SmartRivers - Aquatic invertebrate occurrence and pressure biometric scores in English, Welsh and Scottish rivers. Occurrence dataset on the NBN Atlas

Digitised records