It has been winter so we have been unable to do any water pollution monitoring due to the nature of our rivers up here and access issues during high flow rates (dangerous) so we are resuming in March when we will be recording again and throughout the rest of the year.

As we gather more data, we will then be looking at creating resources around our local pollution monitoring for the local school and volunteer manual we are writing. We will be linking our data to STEM/Chemistry/Biology topics for the school curriculum (re pollution, nitrates, phosphates and invertebrate indicator species) so we will be using the seed money for this.

Great to see Kim and Gaye too completing their first pollution monitoring at the urban end of the Lyne Burn near Dunfermline. This is Site 3. Huge welcome to Gaye too, who is joining the Freshwater Charlestown team!

Mary, Stewart, Tom and Beryl out at Site 2 - Waulkmill Farm monitoring pollution for Earthwatch and invertebrates for Buglife. Great ID skills too for the first time out on their own! Hoping to return to this site again this weekend if the river conditions are suitable after the rain.

We have identified our 3 sites for river pollution monitoring on the Lyne Burn - which is impacted by sewage, run off. The funding and this project has helped us bring together volunteers in our group who have always been concerned about the river, the sewage etc and now have given us a way to do something about it through citizen science. Especially as several of us are scientists and value data!

We have done our first pollution monitoring on the 1st site, using the kit given to us by Earthwatch, on the 10th September 2023 (data uploaded) and will be visiting the 2nd site for the first time on Sunday 24th September.

Kim McKissock, one of our FW Charlestown group members, has volunteered to co-ordinate and upload the data from the volunteers to Earthwatch/ArcGis.

Our 3rd site will be visited in October which is in the urban end of the river.

We are also collecting Buglife Riverfly invertebrate monitoring data too at the same time and have been trained by a local Buglife coordinator on this.

As a result of this funding and the project, we have had an increase in volunteers wanting to be involved, with another 3 signed up to the project and actively involved.

Our plans, once we are up and running with all 3 sites and have a few months data is to share what we have found with the children of the school and the community (e.g. at community council meeting) and continue open dialogue with Scottish Water, SEPA and Fife Council about our findings.

We also hope our continual monitoring will flag up pollution incidents which we can raise with SEPA and highlight the need for investment locally in monitoring and infrastructure around CSO's as an example.

We have identified our 3 sites for river pollution monitoring on the Lyne Burn - which is impacted by Sewage, run off etc. We have done our first pollution monitoring on the 1st site on the 10th September 2023 (data uploaded) and will be visiting the 2nd site for the first time on Sunday 24th September. Kim McKissock, one of our FW Charlestown group members, will be leading on co-ordinating and uploading the data from the volunteers to Earthwatch/ArcGis. Our 3rd site will be visited in October. We are also collecting Buglife Riverfly invertebrate monitoring data too at the same time and have been trained by a local Buglife coordinator on this.

Please find attached our project plan and photo of our team! 2 new volunteers are joining the team - Mo and Mary, invites have gone out to them. Tom Leatherland was on holiday and not pictured. Thanks! Jo