Integrating citizen science into catchment management: lessons learnt from the River Chess

Date: 27th August 2024

The Chilterns National Landscape is spearheading innovative research through the Chess Smarter Water Catchment initiative, addressing one of the government’s top priorities: to protect our rivers and chalk streams.

Recently, we published an article in collaboration with The Freshwater Biological Association on the integration of citizen science in river catchment management.

The study found that through a baseline assessment, river catchment programmes can effectively plan a citizen science programme to tackle water quality, water quantity, and ecological issues together.

Key to the success of the research is effective communication with all those involved, especially regular updates for the citizen scientists who contribute their time and energy to collecting data for the research.

Read the article

A volunteer citizen scientist for the river chess in the chilterns, standing outside with a net wearing a high visability jacket

Chess Citizen Science Stakeholder Event 2024

If you’d like to find out more, we’re organising an event to share our story of how and why we have integrated citizen science into the Smarter Water Catchment project to improve the River Chess catchment.

The morning will consist of talks sharing our experiences, those of our citizen scientists and our collaborators. We will discuss logistics, lessons learned and provide information on what approaches we have used to tackle certain issues facing the River Chess and surrounding landscape.

After lunch, we will take all attendees down to visit the River Chess in Chesham and discuss particular localised issues and what we have done/are doing to mitigate these issues with our collaborators.

The event is being held on Monday 30th September from 9.45am – 3pm

Find out more and book your place