Riverfly Census - Aquatic invertebrate species occurrence, for the calculation of pressure biometric scores in English and Welsh rivers covering the period 2015 - 2018

Citation

Description

Aquatic invertebrate species and abundances were obtained from 3 minute kick-sweep sampling to Environment Agency guidelines. In total 20 rivers were surveyed, typically for three years. Approximately five sample sites were chosen for each river and these were consistently used throughout the survey. Samples were preserved in Industrial Denatured Alcohol and identified by a professional entomologist in a laboratory. The species present were plugged into a biometric calculator to produce scores against various stress types, including sediment, phosphorus, flow, chemicals and organic pollution. Additional information about the dataset can be found at https://wildfish.org/project/riverfly-census/. For more specific data related questions please email Lauren (lauren@wildfish.org).

Purpose

Human activities put rivers under constant pressure from a variety of pollutants. This pollution stops rivers supporting healthy populations of freshwater species. Despite this, government monitoring continues to decline in both frequency and coverage. Through the Riverfly Census and SmartRivers, WildFish are helping to fill the data gap.

Sampling Description

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Bibliographic Citations