Citizen Science Water Quality Sampling - Clitheroe NFM

When and where? Saturday 1st August, 10.00am - 4.00pm at Heidelberg Acres Training Block, Ribblesdale Works, West Bradford Road, BB7 4QF.

Who can join? Anyone! Of any age and any level of previous experience (or inexperience)! Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

What is involved? Help Ribble Rivers Trust collect water quality data at our Natural Flood Management sites. Our NFM interventions have been installed so post-works data collection is now underway to assess the benefits that natural flood management has on our rivers.

The day:

• Refreshments from 10am.
• Indoor training session in the morning (starting at 10:15am) to get everyone up-to-speed with how to carry out the water sampling. We will then split up into smaller groups and head to pre-determined river monitoring sites.
• River surveys: each group will use a simple probe to collect readings of water pH, temperature, conductivity and total dissolved solids. We will also collect a water sample to bring back to the 'classroom'.
• After sampling (and lunch!), we will come back together at the Acres Training Block to perform some water chemistry analyses on the samples. We will collectively test samples for phosphate and ammonia concentrations, and we will prepare some simple E.coli tests.
• RRT staff will demonstrate all testing procedures and will be on hand to help answer any questions.

Other important information:

• Please bring your own packed lunch.
• Most of the survey sites will require a short drive to get to them. Please indicate whether you will have a vehicle on the day that you would be happy to use to travel to the survey site. If you do not have a vehicle, we will make sure to partner you up with someone who does.
• Please bring clean wellies (at least one person in each group will need to go into the river) and be prepared for all weathers.
• Please download (if possible) the app 'what3words' before the event. We will use it to provide you the locations of our monitoring sites.