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The Phase 1 Project: Co-creation and piloting citizen science tools
The Phase 1 Project: Co-creation and piloting citizen science tools
In the autumn of 2023 and spring of 2024 we worked with over 150 people across Yorkshire as a part of local communities or public river/environmental groups, universities, government, charities and local businesses to uncover where our priorities align across Yorkshire's aquatic pollution problem. This involved surveys and workshops where we highlighted the great value our aquatic environments bring to our daily lives and what some of the potential challenges are to maintaining them.
Results of our survey asking Yorkshire residents how they value their local aquatic environments, what the big problems facing them are, and what we can do together to solve these (n=150 responses).
Photograph of a citizen science bacterial growth film showing E. coli colony forming units in blue.
Expanding on existing work at the University of York we also began developing new tools to help us jointly study the aquatic pollution underpinning the challenges we identified that our aquatic environments face. Our ultimate aspiration is that these tools, together with citizen scientists, could help plug data gaps formed by cuts to regulatory monitoring and also enable truly data-driven decisions on how best to tackle these problems.
The tools included a citizen science kit to grow and count E. coli and Coliform bacteria in water as well as a kit to collect water samples for organic contaminant (e.g., pharmaceuticals and personal care products) and metals analysis. Critically, these tools now enable multiple citizen science groups/ individuals to measure endpoints which are typically only monitored by government or academia using harmonised and comparable methods that incorporate robust quality control measures.
A pilot-scale project monitoring bacterial and chemical contaminants in Yorkshire rivers & lakes
A pilot-scale project monitoring bacterial and chemical contaminants in Yorkshire rivers & lakes
In the spring of 2024 we trialed these new tools in 15 Yorkshire rivers/becks and 2 lakes to measure (a) E. coli & coliform bacteria, (b) pharmaceuticals and personal care products, and (c) metals in water. Collectively, we sampled 56 locations across Yorkshire which produced new understanding of the co-occurrence of these aquatic contaminants. The work was enabled by volunteers from the Aire Rivers Trust, Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods, River Foss Society, Nidd Action Group, River Holme Connections, Ryedale Environmental Group, Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust, and the Roundhay Environmental Action Project.
In some places we found concentrations of pharmaceuticals at levels higher than most of the rivers studied across Europe while in others, a clean environment. We also found that high levels of these chemicals do not always coincide with high levels of bacteria, demonstrating the complexities of studying this issue. Together, these results help us to pose new questions about Yorkshire's aquatic environment, questions we hope to be able to answer in the full stage of the AQuA project. It also enabled us to refine these tools so that they work better and are easier to use moving forward.
If you'd like to know more about the results of our pilot-scale citizen science study then you can find the final report here.
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