Totally Thames Water-Blitz

What?•1,000 water samples from a single day•All using the same test kits supplied by River Thame Conservation Trust

•Tested by FHT for Earthwatch•Calibrated against CEH lab-tested results•Mapped by Earthwatch on Fresh Water Watch site

Why?•Highlight importance of Thames River Basin to London-focused Totally Thames Festival

•Engagement opportunity for catchment groups• Impetus for other organisations to join forces•Provide data for catchment partnerships & EA to use in combination with Historic / lab data

Why?•Highlight areas which are likely to be most important for freshwater biodiversity

•Provide a focus for positive achievable action by citizen-based groups or individuals

•Focus attention on places where we can have the greatest beneficial impact – protecting what is already good. (FHT ‘Clean Water for Wildlife’)

Useful at Different Scales

How?• Wild Oxfordshire network – local and regional • Totally Thames partnership• EA – CaBA Partnerships – Riverfly Monitors - landowners• CEH – long-term Thames monitoring• River Thame Conservation Trust• EarthWatch• Freshwater Habitats Trust

CEH Thames Sampling Sites• 23 sites monitored at weekly

intervals since 2009• Water quality testing since

1997• Nitrate records available dating

from 1860’sCentral London

3 mAOD

Thames source:110 mAOD

299 mAOD

Swindon

Oxford

ReadingSlough

WFD waterbodies and Operational Catchments

Riverfly sites

Results?01/10/2015:

>46 organisations

677 data sets

1,354 test samples

new volunteers

organisation links

Green dots give us information on where we need to protect our least nutrient impacted and possibly best freshwater biodiversity sites

Orange dots give us a guide to locations where some interventions to reduce nutrient input may be able to get them low enough to have some ecological benefit.

Red dots are highly impacted and have been for a long time in the Thames (nitrate records available on the Thames from 1850’s) and would need major costly interventions on a huge scale to get low enough to see eco benefits.

Totally Thames Water - BlitzEarthWatch Analysis16/9/2015N=613

EarthWatch Analysis

CEH Laboratory comparison

NO3 y = 0.9632x, R2=0.77PO4 y = 0.9236x, R2 = 0.94

EarthWatch Analysis

Lotic v Lentic

EA - Phosphates standards and the WFD

New standards for the second cycle RBMPs Improved relationship between water quality and biology Based on river type (alkalinity & altitude) New standards for Good status: Median and (Range of concentrations)

Examples for the Thames:

EarthWatch Analysis Thames Blitz 16/9/2015 Average nitrate concentrations Streams and rivers

Relative scale

EarthWatch Analysis Thames Blitz 16/9/2015 Average phosphate concentrationsStreams and rivers

Mean valuesRelative scale

Next?• EA to map to nearest EA sampling and WFD class• Work with catchments to help interpret• Technical article • Case studies• December Conference and workshops Oxford• Repeat blitz – re-sample some sites to get core data sets• FHT & Earthwatch related projects going forward

1. People, Ponds and Water: £1.3 m HLF funded, supported by Natural England includes:

• Clean Water for Wildlife: national project assessing nutrients in streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, ditches, springs

• PondNet: a new national volunteer network for ponds (includes eDNA national survey for great crested newts)

• Thames-specific component with £80k sub-project newly funded by Thames Water Ltd (includes nutrient testing)

2. Developing catchment based water quality assessment with volunteers

• 3 year, c£150k, Earthwatch-funded project usingnutrients kits to assess ponds, streams, rivers

• Detailed rapid kit user manual due Nov 2015

Freshwater Habitats TrustCitizen-science programme

Not THE END of the 2015

Totally Thames Water-Blitz!