CaSTCo is a large-scale national citizen science initiative. The project aims to make sure that people matter at the heart of rivers recovery and to help close the gap that exists between people, data on their catchments and decisions that affect their rivers. This project is being delivered across 10 demonstration catchments with our involvement being in the Teme demo.
The Challenge
Our rivers are in a sorry state and reductions in statutory monitoring has resulted in poor regulation and a lack of available information in relation to river health, leading to an increasing evidence gap and misdirection of resources. There is also a lack of acceptance to integrate citizen science data with other data sets.
Aims and Target
- Develop: a citizen science monitoring programme for ongoing monitoring across the Teme catchment which will feed into the national framework for citizen science approaches and test different monitoring methods, specifically in relation to bacteria sampling.
- Engage: individuals and communities within the Teme catchment to get involved with deriving evidence for catchment management.
- Integrate: citizen science data with that from other sources to build a picture of catchment health and identify opportunities for future work.
