Riverfly Monitoring

As part of the Riverfly Partnership, ARK are part of a national initiative regularly monitoring water quality. Trained ARK volunteers monitor 46 sites on the River Kennet and it's tributaries to check the health of the river.

Latest riverfly data is available here

ARK and Citizen Science

Riverfly monitoring assesses the water quality of Britain's rivers by identifying and counting eight key indicator species of invertebrates which live in our rivers. The data is shared with the Environment Agency, The Riverfly Partnership, The Wildlife Trust and any other interested parties, as well as being analysed by ARK.

Riverfly monitoring is a proven method of picking up pollution incidents that would otherwise go undetected. This was demonstrated upon the major Chlorpyrifos incident in July 2013, which was picked up by our monitors at Elcot Mill, Marlborough and subsequently led to the prevention of any further discharge of this insecticide into the watercourse.