We urgently need to fill gaps in our national evidence base which can help target measures to improve river health. Local communities and citizen scientists are well placed to help fill these gaps, and there are some fantastic examples of this working in practice across the country. However there are few national standards and consistency between local schemes, which makes it difficult to find, access and combine this data with other sources of evidence to inform decisions, or for decision makers to understand whether they can trust the data.

CaSTCo is building the first national framework for integrated monitoring of our river catchments that seeks to tackle the issues around a lack of open collaboration and agreement on how organisations looking after catchments can monitor catchment health, share data and use data to make decisions that  produce the best outcomes for the environment and communities.

We want everyone who cares for and is collecting data on our rivers to be able to see their actions count. To achieve this we need to work together as environmental organisations, water companies, regulators and technical experts to develop an agreed set of standards and protocols for monitoring and data governance which will produce robust data that can easily be integrated with other types of monitoring data, and which can then enable good decisions that produce the best outcomes for the environment and communities.

CaSTCo enables community-gathered data to become genuinely robust. Combining trained citizen scientists with technology on a sufficient scale, and makes analysis of its collective data an incredibly powerful tool. Through sharing, integrating, engaging, training, and collaborating with regulators, communities and decision-makers, we ensure that data is appropriately utilized, adding significant value to decision making, creating more resilient catchments, restoring our rivers, protecting our catchments for nature and all our benefit.

Citizen science is a collaborative approach to scientific research which involves the general public in the collection, analysis, and reporting of data. Citizen science allows non-professional scientists to contribute to various scientific fields, and is becoming increasingly valuable to help scientists gather large datasets which would otherwise be difficult to obtain.

When it comes to rivers, citizen scientists can be involved in many different types of monitoring, collecting data on water quality  wildlife, river morphology, and testing soils. You can find out more about some of the methods and protocols in our Knowledge Base.

Citizen science can help improve river health in many ways, such as providing better data to inform policy and target management action, but also by educating and inspiring communities to advocate for their rivers, and empowering participants to engage in local collective action and individual behaviour change.  Citizen science is also good for us! Research shows that nature-noticing activities have an even more positive impact on health and well-being than simply accessing blue and green space.

The term community monitoring is often used interchangeably with citizen science.

If you are already collecting monitoring data as an organisation or community group or want to start, the CaSTCo framework can help you to ensure your data and monitoring plan adhere to robust criteria and principles and can be used by others, leading to better information on our river catchments and better decisions being made. Please have a look at the resources in the Knowledge Base for guidance.

If your organisation or project already abides by CaSTCo principles and you would like to share your story, you can request to be added to our map.

If you’re a group interested in starting to undertake community monitoring we encourage you to find out what’s already happening within your catchment of interest. CaSTCo is centred on collaboration and open sharing of data to improve access to information for all, and to do this it’s important that activity is aligned to existing monitoring. Engage with what is already happening in your area through the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) website

CaSTCo partners are committed to embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion principles throughout our framework and in guidance documents. We strive to ensure that these resources are accessible, culturally relevant, and supportive of equitable participation across diverse communities. A more detailed explanation of how we incorporate DEI into our guidance materials will be provided soon. If you have any feedback or would like to be part of this working group, please get in touch.

CaSTCo is demonstrating how collaborative approaches to catchment monitoring and data integration can drive efficiencies and effectiveness in decision making in the water sector. CaSTCo is testing approaches for integrating citizen science with other more technological types of monitoring to build a fuller, robust picture of catchment health that can drive decision making at multiple scales. Through CaSTCo we aim to showcase how this approach can streamline monitoring activity, reduce the costs of monitoring, create a more informed and engaged customer base, and generate more useful information to drive decision making that results in the best outcomes for the environment, communities and customers.

Water company partners in CaSTCo are testing approaches through our demonstrator catchments and are working to implement CaSTCo approaches more widely across initiatives and planning within their organisations. We will be consolidating learnings from water company partners soon for publication on this website and inform thinking for the future.

CaSTCo is demonstrating how citizen science can be integrated with other types of monitoring to build a weight of evidence that can be used to inform decision making about catchments at both the local and national level. We aim to show how working collaboratively with others with common goals at catchment scale can deliver lower cost approaches to generate good quality information capable of driving the best outcomes for the environment and communities. Ultimately, CaSTCo will deliver recommendations for how this can be achieved, but transformational change in the sector will require support from government and the regulators.

To make sure CaSTCo and its framework are relevant and useful for decision-makers we have regulatory bodies and government agencies on our advisory board and regularly seek alignment with other national initiatives focussing on related topics.

We know there are many different ways and methods that community groups are using to monitor freshwater, however CaSTCo is only focusing on a few in detail to test how these might be adjusted and improved to produce more impactful data. We are planning on publishing “long lists” of the methods that CaSTCo has considered through our methods audit work and which will provide some useful information to help groups to select methods best suited to their monitoring aims.

We recognise that many organisations are choosing and validating methods that are suitable for their purposes and need to be represented, so we are also developing ways to easily and quickly share information on new and emerging testing methods that are being used and validated.

If your organisation has a project that abides by CaSTCo principles, you can let us know using the request form in ‘Powered by CaSTCo’ to be added to the map.

We’re keen that CaSTCo is relevant to stakeholders across the water landscape. If you know of resources you believe should be included here which others may benefit from, or would like to provide feedback on any of the resources we have published, please get in touch using the contact form below.

This is just the start! CaSTCo is testing out approaches to produce recommendations and a framework for how we can work more closely together and with bigger impact into the future.

With the help of a taskforce of experts, we’re developing a roadmap and business case for scaling-up the CaSTCo approach which set out how the learning from CaSTCo can be embedded into day-to day practices to transform ‘business as usual’. Watch this space for more details.

There’s still a lot of work going on in CaSTCo and much more content and thinking that will be added to this website over the coming months to share our learnings. You can contact us below if there’s something specific you are looking for.