Do you live in County Wicklow? Are you interested in becoming a citizen scientist?
We invite you to participate in Ken Whelan’s increasingly popular one-day Freshwater Detective course. You will gain additional skills in aquatic survey techniques and attend the AST’s, two day, Small Streams Characterisation Course (SSCS).
Freshwater Detective Course
One day / Adults (18 and over) – Saturday 17 July 2021 – Location to be confirmed (County Wicklow)
Based on the content of the very successful Freshwater Detective series of lectures and field trips run over many years in University College Dublin and the more recent AST Small Streams Characterisation Programme (SSCS), this one day introductory course will give participants an understanding of the role which rivers, streams and loughs play in the functioning of Ireland’s freshwater ecosystems. Participants will gain a basic knowledge of life in a range of aquatic water bodies. They will discover how to identify the more common plants and animals, which may act as indicators of the health of the stream. The course will also introduce participants to the threats faced by these water courses, not alone from the more common impacts of land drainage and pollution but also the impacts which invasive fish, invertebrate and plant species can have on the functioning of Wicklow’s rivers streams and loughs.
This introductory course will consist of a full day on the river bank 09.30 to 16.00. The course will include training on how to carry out a basic river survey, the collection and identification of key indicator invertebrate and plant species, how river and stream catchments work and the importance of removing barriers to fish migration.
To register, please return the attached registration form to ken@kenwhelan.info
