"Citizen Crane" project - sampling dates

The Crane Riverfly and phosphorous projects have together been named "Citizen Crane" by the organisers.  Some sort of "Citizen Scientist" pun I think.  Whatever!

The following dates have been arranged for sampling to cover the next 11 months, please make a note of these in your diaries.
2014
June 21st & 22nd
July 19th & 20th
Aug 16th & 17th
Sept 20th & 21st
Oct 18th & 19th
Nov 15th & 16th
Dec 13th & 14th (brought forward one week to avoid Xmas)
Jan 17th & 18th
Feb 21st & 22nd
March 21st & 22nd
April 18th & 19th

Also a provisional date of September 17th has been set for a meeting of all our citizen scientists at ZSL, London Zoo.
This meeting will be an opportunity for us all to discuss how our work will shape investment into improving water quality in the river into the future.

Message from Joe:

Just a note of caution about this weekend’s phosphate and RMI sampling. There has been plenty of rain in the catchment over the last few days, the forecast isn’t too bad for the next couple of days but, if we get more please make sure the river is at a suitable level before you go in. If in doubt, please don’t go in…those stonefly are probably still up in Scotland Kevin, so you can catch them next month!

The Phosphate float will still be doing its rounds on the Sunday so please do fill your sample bottles even if you can’t get in for an RMI sample.

Lastly, thank you again to everyone who attended the meeting up at London Zoo. You have given us some very interesting pointers as to how , with your help, we can develop this project to make tangible improvements to the river. It was particularly important to hear how the Thames Water misconnections work in the catchment is now being influenced by the data you are gathering.

I’ve attached the notes from the meeting, please do get in touch with us if you have any questions or any follow up thoughts on these.

Best wishes
Joe
On behalf of the Citizen Crane team.

In keeping with tradition in 2016 the sampling weekends will be the  3rd of the month so the next three WQ samples are due:
2016
·        January- 16/17th
·        February- 21st/22nd
·        March- 19th/20th

News update from Joe:-

Here is our latest update for your information and comment:


·        The next two sampling weekends are planned for  the 20/21st February and 19/20th March

·        We have submitted a proposal to the Crane Valley Partnership, Thames Water fund to support a further year of the Citizen Crane project.  ZSL already has funding in place to support the RMI until 2017 and our submission to the Thames Water fund is for a further 12 months support for water quality monitoring (until March 2017) and a summer survey of the outfalls across the entire catchment.  If we are successful we will be looking for volunteers to get involved with this event, provisionally booked for the weekend of May 21st/22nd- please pencil it in!  We expect to hear about the proposal by early March and will send out more details soon after .

·        Following discussion with the Environment Agency we removed the real time monitoring project from our draft proposal.  The EA is undertaking its own investigations of the upper catchment using real time monitoring sondes and we hope to discover more about how this is progressing in the near future

·        With thanks to Chris Mountain for helping find a suitable upstream venue the next RMI training event will be on Saturday 7th May in Ruislip (see attached flyer)- please do circulate it to anyone who might be interested.

·        We are going to re-print the A5 Citizen Crane leaflet with a few minor updates.  Could you please advise how many (if any) you might need over the next year or so?

·        Following discussion at the forum, Ilse Steyl has  updated the Citizen Crane webpage to include the latest data  http://www.cranevalley.org.uk/projects/citizen-crane.html  Please have a look at the application and let us have your comments. Some site descriptions are missing so if you’d like to provide those that would also be appreciated. Send comments to Joe who will put them all together for discussion at the next steering group meeting, planned for March 7th.

Thank you all for your continued involvement

All best wishes,
Rob, Joe and Richard

---

Flyer text:
The Zoological Society of London as part of the Citizen Crane Project is
offering training in the River Monitoring Initiative (RMI) sampling method.

The RMI is a national scheme for monitoring the health of rivers. In order to be trained in the
RMI you must be able to sample the river for at least 6 months. Once at the river, samples
take about 30 minutes and are taken monthly.

In the training you will learn:
- The aims of the Citizen Crane Project
- About the RMI scheme
- How to kick sample a river.
- How to identify river invertebrates.
- What to do with the RMI data.

You will also meet other volunteers working up and down the catchment. Everyone
involved in the scheme will be invited to the Crane Forum at ZSL London Zoo

The training will take place at Ruislip Golf Club, Ickenham Road, Ruislip
Saturday May 7th 11am to 4pm

To book a place or for more information please contact : Joe.pecorelli@zsl.org

Need help with sampling on July 16th,
I'm going away for a few days so if anyone can help Trevor with sampling on Saturday please post up
else we'll have to skip a month.

We usually meet in River Gardens, North Feltham trading estate, on Saturday morning 9am (16th July)

Not really Ed. Gonna do the eels but busy afterwards.

Sampling dates for 2018:

• January 19th to 22nd
  
• February 16th to 19th
  
• March 16th to 19th
  
• April 13th to 16th
  
• May 18th to 21st
  
• June 15th to 18th
  
• July 13th to 16th
  
• August 17th to 20th
  
• September 14th to 17th
  
• October 19th to 22nd
  
• November 16th to 19th
  
• December 14th to 17th
  

Citizen Crane forum: October 26th at ZSL - sign up here: https://citizencrane2018.eventbrite.co.uk/

2019 Citizen Crane Sampling Dates

January 18th to 21st
February 15th to 18th
March 15th to 18th
April 13th to 14th
May 17th to 20th
June 14th to 17th
July 19th to 22nd
August 16th to 19th
September 20th to 23rd
October 18th to 21st
November 15th to 18th
December 13th to 16th

Stay Safe!  Don’t get in the river if the level is above welly boot depth
Wash hands thoroughly after sampling

Call the Environment Agency, 0800.80.70.60 and Thames Water, 0800.3.16.98.00 in the event of a pollution event and don’t go in the river
Check for signs of pollution