The Rivers Trust’s Big River Watch is underway

The Rivers Trust is running its annual Big River Watch this week, ending 1 May.

The citizen science survey invites members of the public to observe their local river for 15 minutes, and answer questions posed in an app.

The Rivers Trust will make the results available through an interactive dashboard in near-real time, providing useful data for everyone to use, including individuals and communities seeking to take action to improve river health at a time where environmental monitoring is limited.

In its submission to the Independent Water Commission, The Rivers Trust called for a radical change in approach to water monitoring, especially to use citizen science data alongside other regulated and academic monitoring to build a more accurate picture of the pressures on river health.