Why Is River Catchment Water Monitored?

For decades, environmental bodies and regulatory authorities in the UK have been monitoring river catchments across a wide range of different parameters. This includes physical characteristics such as the turbidity, temperature and flow of the water, as well as the chemical makeup of its constitution and the presence of bacteria, toxins and other contaminants.

Each of these parameters and pollutants requires a different method of monitoring, making the overall endeavour a challenging one. Why, then, does the scientific community bother in the first place? What’s to be gained from performing such thorough and diverse testing upon our bodies of water and the land surrounding them? We’ll delve into the motives and advantages of river catchment monitoring below.

Drinking water cleanliness

As the precious resource upon which all life depends, water is absolutely integral to our survival. The fact that the global population is growing by the day only makes it more in-demand, which is why it’s absolutely imperative that we ensure we have a plentiful supply of it to meet all our needs. Monitoring river catchments can help us to keep tabs on the volume of water passing through our land, as well as ascertain which treatment methods are required to guarantee that it is suitable for drinking purposes.

Ecosystem welfare

Staying abreast of the concentration of toxins, bacteria, chemicals and other contaminants in a river catchment is not just important for safeguarding the health of human life, but also the flora and fauna living in the surrounding area. Entire ecosystems depend on our waterways, with countless species reliant on the quality of the H2O therein in order to simply exist. Of course, conserving these rivers, streams and other catchments is blind without adequate monitoring, so implementing the relevant infrastructure is a key ecological task.

Understanding industrial impact

As well as observing the knock-on effects of contaminated water on the plants and animals which live within it, monitoring river catchments can also help us trace these substances back to their source. More often than not, they originate from anthropogenic industrial activity, as heavy metals, chemicals and other damaging pollutants can leach into the environment. Enriching our understanding about how our actions impact river catchment areas can help to inform planning strategies so as to avoid doing so again in the future.

Furthering research

Given that there are literally tens of thousands of chemicals in circulation in the world today, it’s only logical that there are a great many of these about which we know very little. Those suspected of being potentially damaging to public and environmental health are often termed “contaminants of emerging concern” and any research into how they behave over time, break down in our atmosphere and interact with other lifeforms can add to our burgeoning knowledge of them. As such, monitoring river catchments can help the cause of science, too.