The Modular River Physical (MoRPh) survey was developed in 2015 to provide Citizen Scientists with a means to record and assess physical habitat and hydromorphological functioning in their local rivers and streams. It provided Citizen Scientists, who were implementing the Riverfly (macroinvertebrate) survey, with a tool to capture changing physical habitat conditions at their biological sampling sites. Since 2015 approximately 6000 surveys have been recorded across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland to characterize physical habitats in rivers and streams; track the impacts of river restoration and natural flood management interventions; and provide habitat information to aid interpretation of biological survey data. We describe and illustrate the MoRPh survey and provide examples of how survey data and indices have been used to track changes induced by river restoration interventions on rivers. We provide two examples of how MoRPh habitat data has contributed to understanding river biological survey data through characterizing the responses of aquatic macroinvertebrates and terrestrial plants and invertebrates to environment variables in groundwater-fed rivers and predicting beetle richness in dry temporary streams. Although the MoRPh survey was developed for application to rivers, other complementary Citizen Science methods are becoming available including MoRPh Estuaries (for surveying tidal rivers and estuary margins) and MudSpotter (for recording the locations and types of sources delivering fine sediment to river systems during wet weather).

The idea that citizen science can fill ‘gaps’ in data collected by regulators is often quoted as a justification for the widespread adoption of volunteer monitoring. The many papers that support this focus on how quantitative data produced by volunteers can complement professionally-gathered data, e.g. from water resource authorities. In this study, we move beyond the data to explore how local knowledge (held by volunteers) can complement institutional knowledge (held and formally documented by the regulator). We present the results of a community mapping exercise focussed on the Lower Lea – an urban tributary of the River Thames in East London. A series of focus groups and interviews were held with local communities over the summer of 2022. These gathered qualitative and geolocated information about a) the ways people interact with the river, and b) people’s concerns about the river environment. A total of 27 socio-environmental activities linked to potential deterioration of ecological health were identified and located along a 19km stretch of river, compared to 16 formally documented by the regulator. Furthermore, we identified that the current regulatory monitoring regime does not collect data at a high enough spatial or temporal resolution to formally identify these issues nor to understand their impacts on river condition. Our results invite greater consideration of citizen-generated data and knowledge in the design of targeted or ‘agile’ river monitoring schemes.

Citizen Science is a mostly understood area. Community citizen science may be another deviation from this that connects our modern-day ideals of ‘Place’ where we focus project development on our doorstep, connecting ourselves more with the immediate surroundings and how we sustain communities within these. The main difference being that they are community driven with the only agency being a collective agenda for change. Therefore, the drivers of citizen science might be more important to distinguish when it comes to sustainability; when its community grown its more malleable, allowing adjustments which incorporate societal and environmental change. Using a case study on the Lothian Esk, we have been exploring a project that has grown to catchment scale monitoring using community citizen science. Building and reconnecting the community to its river through a rather unlikely facilitator, the freshwater invertebrate. I will discuss this from the bottom up, the effort involved to grow and sustain this project. The communication and success of one group creating a ‘Buzz’ that attracted a wider audience across Scotland and a launch pad for a country wide roll out.

The involvement of citizen scientists in issues of water quality is acknowledged as an opportunity to increase both public engagement and spatiotemporal resolution of monitoring data. The Rapid Assessment of PeriPhyton Ecology in Rivers (RAPPER) is a method for evaluating the risk of eutrophication in wadable rivers, recognised for having potential application in citizen science. However, the use of a microscope is a barrier to adoption of the method by citizen scientists. A simplified, field-based version of RAPPER was developed with the aim of producing comparable results to the original method. The original and simplified RAPPER methods were trialled simultaneously at 19 sites across two sub-catchments of the river Ribble. Furthermore, Anglers’ Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) surveys were undertaken to investigate the potential for incorporating RAPPER with other rapid ecological assessments. The simplified and original RAPPER methods were highly comparable, attaining matching results at 95% of sites. By not using a microscope, the risk of false positive results was potentially increased, although further study is required to assess the uncertainty surrounding simplified RAPPER, especially in waters with very low alkalinity. No significant differences between ARMI score and the RAPPER eutrophication risk classification were observed, potentially due to the influence of longitudinal changes in river productivity. The RAPPER results were also compared with different Water Framework Directive classifications, but no significant associations were observed. Despite the poor relationships between RAPPER and other measures of water quality, the benefits of using rapid monitoring to supplement other datasets was recognised.

We are now at a pivotal moment in UK nature conservation. Fulfilling the ambition to think big, at least on paper, the UK Government’s Nature Recovery Strategy (NRS) will, for the first time, provide a legislative driver to address the ambitions of the Lawton Review (2010), which emphasised a need for large-scale land-use change in the UK. A key component of the NRS is a proposed Nature Recovery Network (NRN), a national network of wildlife- rich places. Strategic mapping of habitats, that can provide connectivity within the wider landscape, outside of nature reserves, will provide the building blocks of the NRN. The ability to incorporate ponds and pond restoration into England’s NRN will depend on knowledge both on pond locations present and past and on existing pond quality. Nevertheless, previous desk-based studies of ponds by the UCL Pond Restoration Research Group (Alderton, 2017) have highlighted often considerable differences between current Ordnance Survey (OS) mapping and actual pond presence/absence on the ground. Further, little is currently known on the state of UK ponds. To fill these key knowledge gaps, the Norfolk Ponds Project’s UCL-led ‘Project Pit Stop’ has aimed to engage citizen scientists with pond mapping and habitat assessment in the pilot area of the Norfolk Coast AONB. Using a ‘strawman’ approach to development, the project tested the potential interest for citizen science based ‘ground-truthing’ of pond distribution and loss, as well as existing pond quality. Findings from the project and feedback provided from the pilot study group will be discussed.

Given its large land area and significant remoteness, Canada represents a major challenge for river monitoring. One solution has been the development of partner-based monitoring networks such as the Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) which can deliver national training for sample collection, with community-based monitoring groups playing an increasingly prominent role. The Sequencing the Rivers for Environmental Assessment and Monitoring (STREAM) project is expanding this approach by employing environmental DNA to support a better understanding of the health of river systems across Canada. This project links citizen scientists, including Indigenous Groups, and NGOs with university and government scientists. The project includes components on outreach and recruitment, training and dissemination of results obtained from sequence data, and allows the rapid dissemination of watershed biodiversity reports with a target turnaround time of ~ 2 months. This Biomonitoring 2.0 approach eliminates the scientific data bottleneck for consistent identification of freshwater benthic macroinvertebrates. Freshwater macroinvertebrates, due to their trophic position and feeding habits, are natural environmental samplers, and thus multi-marker metabarcoding can support detection of diatoms and vertebrates from the same kick-net samples --allowing simultaneous monitoring across taxon groups, delivering novel data products such as trait and trophic network analyses. Here we discuss how STREAM can provide a model for river monitoring on a global scale. Our approach is a gateway to monitoring that moves beyond bioindicators, integrating ‘omics methods to extract functional insights, assess interactions, and supports predictive modelling.