Walk-over Surveys

At South Cumbria Rivers Trust, we’re always on the look out for ways to improve our rivers, streams and lakes. An important aspect of our work is assessing the health of local watercourses and in order to achieve this we conduct walk-over surveys to identify pressures and issues within our catchments.

These surveys form part of our day-to-day activities and our staff and volunteers are the ‘eyes on the ground’ when it comes to spotting pollution incidents such as septic tanks discharges and poorly timed slurry spreading. We also keep an eye out for river bank erosion, invasive species and livestock accessing and damaging watercourses.

Training our staff and volunteers

We regularly offer volunteer training courses to provide locals with the knowledge about what to look for and we also provide equipment on loan such as GPS units, maps and waterproof data-sheets to help with the recording of the survey findings.

The information from these surveys is invaluable to South Cumbria Rivers Trust as it allows us to monitor a lot more watercourses than would be feasible using our 5 staff members.

The data collected from walk over surveys is in-putted to our Geographical Information System (GIS) which allows us to quickly and easily track improvements in rivers and it also allows us to easily access large datasets for use in preparing funding applications.

Get involved!

We’re always on the look out for new surveyors so if you’d like to be the ‘guardian’ of your local stream or river, please get in touch! If you’d like to get involved, please contact us.