EGU2020-17950
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-17950
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

ChessWatch: Observations on a Citizen Science approach to catchment management.

Catherine Heppell1, Angela Bartlett1, Allen Beechey2, Paul Jennings3, and Helena Souteriou4
Catherine Heppell et al.
  • 1School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom.
  • 2Chilterns Chalk Streams Project, The Chilterns AONB, United Kingdom.
  • 3River Chess Association, United Kingdom.
  • 4Thames Water, Reading, United Kingdom.

River Chess is a chalk stream in South East England (UK), under unprecedented pressure from over-abstraction, urbanisation and climate change, which currently fails to meet good ecological status. Citizen Scientists have been active in the catchment for 9 years carrying out riverfly monitoring due chiefly to concerns about water quality and poor fish populations. The River Chess is also a pilot river for a new catchment-based ‘Smarter Water Catchments’ programme run by the region’s wastewater treatment company (Thames Water) which aims to work with local communities and regulators to deliver improvements to the river by tackling multiple challenges together. The community-led ChessWatch project is a part of this initiative, and is designed to raise public awareness of threats to the River Chess and involve the public in river management activities using a sensor network as a platform. In 2018 four water quality sensors were installed in the river to provide stakeholders with real-time water quality data (15-minute intervals) to support catchment management activities. The dataset from the project is intended to support future decision-making in the catchment as part of the five-year ‘Smarter Water Catchments’ approach.

Our presentation will review the successes and drawbacks of the ChessWatch project to date and examine the challenges of linking the data collected by the project to policy and practice in a catchment with multiple stakeholder groups. We present the results of a participatory mapping exercise held at local community events to capture the public use of, and concerns for, the river revealing concerns for low flows and water quality issues linked to abstraction and runoff. We show how dissolved oxygen, temperature, turbidity, chlorophyll-a and tryptophan measurements made by the sensors are enabling local stakeholders to better understand the threats to the river arising from urban runoff and changing rainfall patterns, and we examine the challenges of data presentation, sharing and usage in an urbanised catchment with high water demand and multiple conflicting interests.

How to cite: Heppell, C., Bartlett, A., Beechey, A., Jennings, P., and Souteriou, H.: ChessWatch: Observations on a Citizen Science approach to catchment management., EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-17950, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-17950, 2020

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