Lee Valley Hydrocitizenship team has celebrated the World Water Day (22.03.2016) with water and sediment sampling in the Lower Lee with Luciana Alves and Prof. Lian Lundy.

Luciana’s PhD research focuses on the impacts of an urban catchment on water and sediment quality of a receiving river in the case of lower River Lee. While water quality has been the focus of several academic research and EU/national documents, little has been done with regard to sediment quality. River Lee has been subject to increasing urbanisation in the last 100 years and it receives major discharges of treated sewage effluent.


​The research involves a combination of field, laboratory and desk-based studies. Alessandro and I joined Luciana and Lian for the collection of water and sediment samples from 11 sites selected to represent variations in drainage and land use activities. Samples are analysed for heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants.

​We started the day at 8am at the Middlesex University car park and visited all the sampling points by 4pm. Luckily, it was a blue sky, beautiful London day and it was quite pleasant to spend it by the water and nature. 
 
Luciana’s work helps to enhance understanding of the process of pollutant release from sediment to water. The combined output of the this research will inform the development of a GIS-based model to enable stakeholders, e.g. the Environment Agency, to identify and prioritise pollutant sources within a catchment based on their potential to negatively impact on water and sediment quality.
 
Reference: Alves L., Lundy L., Revitt M., Wildeboer D. (2015) Evaluating the impacts of an urban catchment on water and sediment quality of a receiving river, Poster Presentation, Middlesex University

​As part of our on-going collaboration with the London Wildlife Trust at Walthamstow Wetlands (http://www.walthamstow-wetlands.org.uk/) the Hydrocitizenship team helped out at their Volunteer Roadshow (12th March 2016).
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It was a really positive day of learning and sharing ideas with the morning involving working with members of the existing community engagement volunteer team to run our interactive research training session. In the afternoon we ran a participatory cultural mapping stall to capture the views of the many prospective volunteers that came along to find out about the project and how they could get involved.
Understanding why current and potential visitors use and value the site is really important to a project like Walthamstow Wetlands and the volunteers will be key to collating that data.  Part of that research process involves the volunteers developing a set of basic research skills around the purpose, approach, ethics, good practice and logistics of visitor surveying. To help build these skills our training session involved a range of interactive exercises including research simulation through role-play. The team got the chance to test out their new skills on Sunday when following a guided walk of the wetlands we worked as a combined research team to survey the visitors. Rachel Smith, Walthamstow Wetlands Engagement Officer, had lovely things to say about our contribution! ‘It is a pleasure to work with the Hydrocitizenship team who contributed hugely to the days’ success through research technique training and cultural mapping with the volunteers’.