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| New volunteers getting to grips with kick sampling |
We had our first Riverfly Monitoring Initiative (RMI) training event on Saturday. It was a great day, with enthusiastic trainees learning how to conduct riverfly monitoring, learning how the monitoring helps us detect acute pollution incidents.
Past blogs have discussed the benefits of conducting RMU’s in urban rivers (
KU blog 1 and
KU blog 2).
Urban rivers are (mostly) already compromised by pollution, making some long term trends more difficult to determine; however the results of regular, repeated monitoring, still leads to insights how habitat changes and potentially changes in background pollution levels , impact invertebrates population in our rivers.
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| Joe showing the new volunteers some of the animals we monitor to help them identify them |
The majority of the day was spent in the river, firstly getting familiar with the different species which Joe netted out while demonstrating the kick sampling technique.
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| I spy with my little eye... |
After lunch the trainees got their feet wet practicing by getting in the river and practicing.
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| Preparing to get their feet wet |
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| Practicing kick sampling in small teams |
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| Dagmara and Steven sorting out their kick sample |
While practicing, Frances, a volunteer from the Lea River, found this Orange Ladybird (Halyzia 16-guttata) which hasn’t been recorded before at Knights Park – records of the find have been submitted to www.ladybird-survey.org
If you spot any ladybirds on campus, why not send them your records too – its quick to do from your phone, and if you take a photo on your phone at a low resolution (under 1 mb) you can upload it straight away.
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| Demoiselle nymphs found when kick sampling |
Speaking of other species, two of the trainees thought they saw a mink at Middle Mill – as this is an invasive species, we are keen to find out how they are using our site. If you happen to get any photos of the mink at middle mill, please email them over to me, with the date and time of your sighting.
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| Jeff and Eike checking the number of species in their sample |
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| Frances, Paul and Nicky sorting out their deeper water sample |
Some of the trainees are keen to set up surveys on their local rivers, e.g. the Lea, and the Pym, while there are organisations such as
Thames21 also running RMI surveys on different rivers.
If you are keen to get involved, but the Hogsmill is too far from your home, why not find out if there is a local sampling site near you that you can join.
Sites always welcome more help. If you email me on
biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk with your location/the name of your closest river, I can forward your enquiry to the team at ZSL who can tell you know if they have a sampling site near you, or if they know of an organisation that does.
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| Fully fledged new RMI surveyors |
For those of you who are local to Kingston, you can find out more about the Hogsmill River and some of the surveys that different volunteers do, in the Hogsmill Newsletter (produced by local volunteer Peter Short)
which you can download here. Breaking news - a new RMI site in the offing for 2018 at Tolworth Brook (AKA Raeburn Open Space) with managed by the Environment Trust.
We are running a second RMI training event in April 2018. If you are interested in getting trained up to join one of the local RMI monitoring sites in Kingston, or to take your new skills to teams further afield, please get in touch by emailing
biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk; everyone's welcome...just come prepared for lots of photos :)
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| Volunteers helped to get a photo of Joe to add to the in-water volunteer group photo (even as a compost!) |
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