Catchment Protection

Practical solutions for protecting, understanding and improving our water environment

Protecting rivers, lakes and groundwater often depends on local action. Flux Enviro is committed to supporting community organisations, charities, rivers trusts, environmental groups, individuals, landowners, researchers, regulators and public bodies working to understand and improve the water environment across the UK and Ireland.

Projects can range from a community group carrying out its first water-quality survey to a regulator or catchment partnership establishing a long-term monitoring programme. Whatever the scale, we aim to provide practical advice, appropriate equipment and solutions proportionate to the objectives and available budget.

Our capabilities bring together water sampling, water quality, hydrology and groundwater monitoring with practical catchment protection measures such as solar-powered livestock watering. Equipment ranges from simple field instruments for community and educational projects through to continuous river, groundwater and water-quality monitoring systems.

Importantly, you do not need to know exactly what equipment you need before contacting us. We can help establish what needs to be measured, where measurements should be taken and what level of instrumentation is appropriate before recommending equipment.

Community, Charity & Citizen Science Projects

We recognise that community organisations, charities and voluntary groups often operate with limited budgets, volunteer resources and varying levels of technical experience.

Our role can therefore extend beyond simply supplying equipment. We can help organisations understand the available measurement methods, select appropriate instrumentation and develop a practical monitoring approach around the objectives of the project.

Equipment can support:

• Community water-quality monitoring

• Rivers trusts and environmental groups

• Charities and voluntary organisations

• Citizen-science programmes

• Schools, colleges and universities

• Public engagement projects

• Catchment restoration initiatives

• Baseline surveys and local investigations

Where appropriate, we prioritise equipment that is robust, straightforward to operate and capable of producing meaningful environmental data without unnecessary cost or complexity. Support can include equipment selection, technical advice, training and assistance with developing practical monitoring arrangements.

Water Quality & Catchment Monitoring

Understanding catchment condition often requires water-quality measurements to be considered alongside the hydrological processes influencing them. Rainfall, groundwater, runoff, river level and flow can all affect the timing, concentration and transport of pollutants through a catchment.

Flux Enviro can support monitoring of:

• Water sampling and handheld water-quality measurement

• pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and temperature

• Nutrients and selected water-quality parameters

• Multiparameter and continuous water-quality monitoring

• River and stream level

• Manual and continuous flow measurement

• Rainfall and runoff

• Groundwater level

Monitoring can range from simple field measurements and individual data loggers through to coordinated monitoring across multiple locations. For community and educational projects, straightforward field instruments can provide an accessible way of collecting useful environmental data, while larger programmes may combine continuous monitoring, telemetry and remote data access.

Bringing hydrological and water-quality measurements together can provide much greater context when investigating catchment pressures, pollution events, seasonal changes and the response to environmental improvements.

More specialised instrumentation is available through our Hydrology and Hydrogeology Monitoring Solutions.

Catchment Protection Measures

Protecting a watercourse does not always involve monitoring. Practical interventions can directly reduce pressures on the catchment. Preventing livestock from entering rivers and streams can help reduce bank erosion, sediment input and direct contamination, but animals still require a reliable source of drinking water.

Flux Enviro supplies LORENTZ S1 solar-powered pumping systems for livestock drinking water and small-scale irrigation, providing a practical solution for locations where mains electricity is unavailable.

Systems can:

• Pump from any water source - rivers, streams, ponds and wells

• Supply livestock drinking troughs

• Transfer water to header tanks

• Support small-scale irrigation

• Operate without mains electricity

• Solar-powered operation with low running costs

The compact and cost effective LORENTZ S1-200 system is particularly suited to smaller livestock watering applications and can provide an alternative water supply where fencing or riparian buffer zones prevent direct livestock access to watercourses.

Depending on the project and current funding programme, grant assistance may be available for eligible environmental or agricultural measures.

Catchment Monitoring Networks

Depending on the project, this may involve upstream and downstream measurements, control or reference locations, monitoring across tributaries or sub-catchments, manual sampling, continuous logging, or measurements collected before and after an intervention.

Monitoring does not necessarily need to be complex. A small number of well-selected parameters measured at appropriate locations can often provide more useful information than an unnecessarily complicated monitoring network.

Depending on the project, this may involve upstream and downstream measurements, control or reference locations, manual sampling, continuous logging or measurements collected before and after an intervention.

For larger programmes, Flux Enviro can integrate instrumentation across multiple monitoring locations within a catchment to measure water quality, river level, flow, rainfall, groundwater and other environmental parameters. Systems can incorporate local data logging, telemetry, remote data access and configurable alarms.

We support rivers trusts, catchment partnerships, environmental organisations, researchers, local authorities and regulators, with involvement ranging from individual instruments through to system design, equipment supply, installation, commissioning, training, telemetry and ongoing servicing. Our involvement can be as simple as answering a technical question or helping select a field instrument, through to providing training, equipment rental or developing a complete monitoring programme. We're here to help!