Riverfly monitoring by Nith Life volunteers
Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (RMI)
The Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (RMI) is a citizen science project that enables trained volunteers to protect river water quality by monitoring eight pollution-sensitive invertebrates and complement the work carried out by statutory agency staff across the UK.
This Nith Life project is run as part of the Riverfly Partnership which is a dynamic network of organisations, representing conservationists, entomologists, scientists, water course managers, anglers and relevant authorities, working together to:
- protect the water quality of our rivers;
- further the understanding of riverfly populations, and;
- conserve riverfly habitats.
Nith Life fully support the core aims of the Riverfly Partnership which are:
- detecting environmental incidences such as pollution;
- providing a forum for raising issues affecting riverflies;
- developing consensus and collaborative action;
- raising public and strategic awareness of riverflies, their importance to aquatic conservation and ecological function;
- involving people in monitoring and recording riverflies;
- offering leadership and disseminating expertise in the effective acquisition and interpretation of riverfly monitoring data;
- stimulating scientific research to answer key questions about issues affecting riverflies;
- improving the conservation status of riverfly species by securing healthy and sustainable populations;
- seeking to form and influence debate of current issues.
What are riverflies and why do we monitor them
Riverflies are invertebrates that spend most of their life cycle in a river, stream, pond or lake. The three key groups are stoneflies, caddisflies and mayflies. Along with other freshwater invertebrates, they are at the heart of the freshwater ecosystem and are a vital link in the aquatic food chain. Their common characteristics of limited mobility, relatively long life cycle, presence throughout the year, and specific tolerances to changes in environmental conditions make them good indicators of water quality.
Training and support for this project
All the Nith Life volunteers have been trained by the Buglife team who are the Riverfly hub Coordinators for Scotland. They provided the free training consisting of a 3 hour online course followed up by an onsite training and consolidation event at one of our monitoring sites. They also provide ongoing support including annual visits and checking our results before uploading them to the publicly available national data map. This data can be accessed through the Riverfly website here.
How to volunteer
We are always keen to welcome more volunteers to help us with the Riverfly monitoring. We have two sites (soon to be three) with their own survey teams, and we survey each site once a month April to October. You won’t need to be available for every session.
No experience is necessary and all training is free.
Please contact us at hello@nithlife.co.uk for more information