CaSTCo Collaborations

The Riverfly Partnership has been taking part in CaSTCo, supporting demo catchments that are using RMI as part of a suite of citizen science initiatives to learn about the water quality in their catchments. 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. All of these organisations working together are 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.

Here at the Riverfly Partnership we wanted to share the work that is now emerging from CaSTCo — you can find all of this on their recently launched website and via the following links: how to devise a collaborative monitoring plan, a guide to creating a holistic plan for your monitoring program; a methods overview including useful method audits for biological monitoring, physical habitat assessments, soil testing and water quality. You can also read about how things are working in practice by reading the case studies such as that of Thames21 who are using Urban Riverfly alongside various bits of kit that give them water quality data, such as Hanna Checkers and Secchi tubes, to get a well-rounded picture of what is happening in the rivers their volunteers monitor.

The CaSTCo website is a great resource, sharing everything from methods to health and safety to case studies. If you and your group are thinking of expanding the monitoring that you do, we’re sure you’ll find something useful to guide you here.