Our fantastic River Guardians have been busy collecting over 1400+ River Health Surveys since the start of 2024. Collecting both chemical water quality data, as well as an observational assessment of wildlife, pollution and river characteristics.
We’ve compiled all this data and brought in external data collected from the Environment Agency to provide a more appropriate summary of our rivers and streams, and now have designed handy scorecards which give you a snapshot overview of each river’s health.
Why use Scorecards?
Our Scorecards aim to bridge the gap between scientific data and public understanding, fostering greater environmental awareness and community involvement. The scorecards offer several important benefits for communities, policymakers, and environmental organisations such as:
1. Simplifying Complex Data: translating technical and scientific information into an easy-to-understand format, allowing people of all backgrounds to quickly grasp the health of their local rivers. This accessibility empowers communities to engage with local water management efforts, advocate for better policies and take action to protect their rivers.
2. Raising Public Awareness: By clearly presenting wider river issues such as pollution, habitat degradation, and invasive species, scorecards increase public understanding and concern about river health, fostering a sense of stewardship.
3. Supporting Informed Decision-Making: Local authority and regulators can use scorecards to identify problem areas, prioritise conservation efforts, and allocate resources more effectively.
4. Tracking Changes Over Time: We aim to regularly update scorecards to provide a snapshot of river health over time, helping communities and researchers monitor trends, measure the impact of interventions and respond to emerging threats (see example from 2023/24 Chesapeake Bay & Watershed Report card below).
5. Encouraging Community Engagement: Scorecards empower local residents to get involved by providing clear evidence of river conditions and motivating action, such as volunteering for Riverfly or Water Quality Monitoring (River Guardian), clean-up efforts or advocating for better water policies.
6. Promoting Accountability: Publicly available scorecards create transparency, holding industries and governments accountable for maintaining and improving water quality and river ecosystems.
Why do we need a mix of water quality and observational data?
Combining water quality data with information on habitat, invasive species and pollution provides a more comprehensive understanding of river health.
While water quality indicators, such as nutrient levels (Phosphate & Nitrate) or Total Dissolved Solids reveal chemical conditions, they do not capture the full picture of a river’s ecological health. Including habitat abundance and diversity data helps assess the physical environment and biodiversity, highlighting whether aquatic and riparian life has the space and conditions to thrive.
Information on Invasive Non-Native species is crucial because these organisms can disrupt ecosystems, outcompete native species, and lead to river habitat degradation.
Pollution data, beyond basic water chemistry, identifies external pressures like plastic waste or chemical runoff that directly impact the river and surrounding environments.
Together, these diverse data points give a holistic view of river health, allowing communities and decision-makers to understand not just the current state, but also the underlying factors affecting the river’s long-term sustainability.
How Can Scorecards Drive Positive Action?
River health scorecards can drive positive action in several key ways:
Empowering Communities
Motivating Policy Change
Identifying Priority Areas
Tracking and Celebrating Progress
Raising Public Awareness and Behaviour Change
Driving Funding and Resources
In short, river health scorecards turn data into a call to action—making river health issues visible, understandable, and actionable for everyone.
What are these scorecards not used for?
The scorecards were NOT intended to:
- Provide an absolute or comprehensive assessment of the overall health of the waterbody
- Replace or directly compete with the EA’s Water Framework Directive assessment for waterbodies
- Account for local variations in expected ‘natural’ conditions – e.g. between Dartmoor streams or lowland rivers on the Somerset Levels
- Provide site level summaries or detailed analysis of CSI results.
Overall, we hope river health scorecards are a powerful tool to inform, engage, and drive positive change in protecting and restoring our vital freshwater ecosystems.