CaSTCo Project
CaSTCo - the Catchment Systems Thinking Cooperative
The four-year CaSTCo project was a programme funded by the OfWAT Innovation Fund and involved water companies, rivers groups, volunteers, scientists and academics from across the UK.
All over Britain, several organisations, river groups and community volunteers have been carrying out sampling and data collection for a range of parameters over many years, but this has been done working in isolation, using a variety of differing sampling and measuring techniques and with the data they’ve collected spread across multiple platforms. While some data is collected by professional bodies, other information is gathered by ‘citizen scientist’ volunteers. This means data has not necessarily been seen as reliable or comparable between one source and another. The CaSTCo project set out to change that.
Led by The Rivers Trust, the CaSTCo project brought together over 30 partner organisations who worked together with citizen scientist volunteers to trial and develop nationally consistent monitoring techniques, comparing various measuring methods across a variety of river types and wetland environments. CaSTCO aimed to develop common standards for monitoring and demonstrate that the data from all sources could be considered as reliable and valuable.
The River Beane was chosen as the Chalk Stream demonstrator for the project, and local partners included the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, the Environment Agency, Affinity Water alongside volunteers from the RBRA.
Although the initial CaSTCo project came to an end in September 2025, it has set a baseline for ongoing data collection and sharing and the RBRA will continue to be involved with this going forwards. The wider way forward is detailed in CaSTCo’s Roadmap for the Future publication.
Our volunteers were trained to carry out regular chemical testing (for nitrate and phosphate pollutions), mudspotter surveys (for silt ingress and run-off monitoring), and have carried out an initial Outfall Safari along a tributary to the Beane. This has supplemented our long-standing Riverfly monitoring and groundwater level measuring. You can see more about the part our volunteers played in the CaSTCo Beane Demo case study. If you fancy helping out with these types of activities, take a look at our volunteering page
CaSTCo have now published their Impact Report* which details the huge value that citizen science volunteers brought to the programme and can continue to do so in the future. (*Note: this is a large file which can take little time to fully download)
You can find out much more about the CaSTCo project, why it was set up and where it goes from here at the CaSTCo website.