From May to the end of September 2024, we are running the nationwide action campaign #unsereFlüsse (#our rivers) as a team from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ Leipzig and media professional from the German public television (ARD).
The aim of the campaign is to motivate as many people as possible to observe and report the habitat quality of their streams with a low-threshold participatory offer. We have developed a short online questionnaire for this purpose. This is a greatly simplified version of the FLOW protocol for water structure assessment.
Various environmental associations, the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt), the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (Bundesamt für Naturschutz), the German Angling Association (DAFV), the Scouts, Omas for Future and many other organisations are supporting our call for participation. Currently (mid-August 2024), we have already received over 2,300 stream records from all over Germany.
Link of FLOW project and action campaign
This year's action campaign is an introductory programme for environmental education in the field of freshwater ecology for anyone who wants to take part spontaneously. The aim of the campaign is to increase public awareness of our streams and hopefully gain political support for further funding of the FLOW project. In this way, we can draw attention to the FLOW project, with which we collect scientifically standardised data. We also hope to attract more volunteers who may wish to take part in the FLOW project next year.
The FLOW project is our long-term citizen science project, which analyses the ecological status of streams in a comprehensive and standardised way. The results of your FLOW monitoring events will be incorporated into scientific studies. We are currently actively seeking to promote and consolidate the FLOW network in the long term, including through the action campaign, to create new knowledge on freshwater health together!
The results of the action campaign will be presented in various press reports in autumn 2024 and in an ARD documentary in October 2024.
