BART works around the catchment to carry out research that will help to inform future improvement work. Our main areas of research include:
Find out how citizen scientists are working with BART to improve river health. Could you volunteer as a citizen scientist?
Find out how citizen scientists are working with BART to improve river health. Could you volunteer as a citizen scientist?
The annual Bristol Avon RiverBlitz is returning on the 7th -14th of July! After seven successful years, we are hopeful that enthusiastic citizen scientists will sign up in record numbers…
Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) worked in partnership with Bristol City Council and Nature Metrics to carry out a pilot environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis of individual species and communities of…
The Bristol Avon RiverBlitz (formally Waterblitz) returns for the sixth consecutive year this July! We have watched this citizen science project expand year on year and we expect even more…
To better understand the water quality pressures influencing the River Chew, Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) enrolled onto the Salmon & Trout Conservation (S&TC) SmartRivers project in 2019. After two…
The 18th – 24th November marks the WHO World Antimicrobial Awareness (AMR) week each year – so now seems a very appropriate time to give you a brief update on…
The Bristol Avon WaterBlitz returns this July, and it’s bigger than ever! BART is encouraging as many citizen scientists as possible to get out to their local watercourse and sample…
Looking after our precious freshwater ecosystems amongst the myriad of other environmental and social challenges sometimes seems impossible and that our voices are drowned by more immediately pressing societal matters…
Bristol Avon WaterBlitz is Back! BART are thrilled to announce that we will be running our annual citizen science event: the Bristol Avon WaterBlitz. BART is working in partnership with…
BART signed up to the SmartRivers Initiative in 2019 and undertook our first sampling in November 2019 on the River Chew. SmartRivers is a scheme spearheaded by Salmon and Trout Conservation…
We have reached 60 Riverfly Partnership monitors! These volunteers each sample their site once a month, monitoring invertebrates as indicators of water quality. They help us to gain a long term dataset…
BART are pleased to announce that we now own our own set of electrofishing kit. BART has been conducting electrofishing surveys for some time with partners, however we have now…
Thank you to all of our 424 wonderful volunteers for your efforts in monitoring for us this year. You can find out the results of the 2019 Waterblitz below! …
BART are investigating the migratory passage of European eels in the Lower Severn Vales as part of the Forgotten Landscape Project. We are aiming to assess the success of eel…
Bristol Avon Rivers Trust are excited to announce the 2019 Bristol Avon WaterBlitz; a yearly campaign to collect as many water quality samples as possible in a week from across…
During 2019, BART will be delivering a River Chew Fisheries Improvement Strategy to develop improvement plans which could be made to the river as a fishery. The work will build…
The BART team have been busy this month doing barrier assessments for Bristol Water to understand which fish species (if any) can get over a number of weirs. Fish need to move…
Our Bristol Avon WaterBlitz is run annually to assess the health of the rivers and the streams within the catchment. As part of the WaterBlitz, participants test the water quality by taking samples to find…
Yesterday BART spent the day on the Wellow Brook assessing fish passage on three weirs in Radstock. We measured the physical characteristics of the weirs including water depths, height and…
Bristol Avon Rivers Trust (BART) is excited to announce the 2018 Bristol Avon WaterBlitz; a campaign to collect as many water quality samples as possible in a week from across…
BART are pleased to welcome our newest University research students this month from the University of Bristol who will be continuing our water quality monitoring along tributaries of the Bristol…
BART have been very busy recently, travelling all over the catchment doing walkover surveys and writing advisory reports for river improvement projects including the Corston, Newton, and Nunney Brooks and…
Back in October we worked with West Country Rivers Trust and Bristol Water to begin an eel escarpment study on Blagdon Lake reservoir in Somerset. It was a week of…
Thanks to funding from the Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership, BART carried out electrofishing surveys on the Wellow Brook this summer. The study was undertaken to provide part of a set…
BART’s ecologist, Jessy Grant, has been busy this summer with lots of exciting ecological monitoring projects for both BART and external clients. Here’s more information about some of our ecological…
BART have recently been helping a local company called Epimorphics to gain an understanding of how best to display river health data for use by conservationists and members of the…
Thank you so much to everyone who has taken part in our Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership funded Freshwater Watch citizen science project over the last year, from those of you…
The local Environment Agency team have recently published their fish population reports for the Bristol Avon catchment 2016, assessing the health of our rivers to inform future management. Click below…
BART have completed a very interesting and useful project funded by the Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership this Spring. Sediment entering watercourses can have a detrimental effect on aquatic ecology, including…
BART have been busy over the last few months undertaking a variety of river surveys on Duchy of Cornwall estate land near to Bath, including: In-stream and riparian habitat surveys…
BART have completed the first phase of the pilot Your Fisheries Pilot project which is taking place across the country on behalf of the Rivers Trust, Angling Trust and Environment…
Our Aquatic Ecologist, Jess, and Project Officer Harriet have been out on both the Corston and Newton Brook near Bath doing a variety of walkover surveys. This will help us…
This BART worked with Five Rivers Environmental Contractors carrying out electrofishing surveys along the Midford Brook and Wellow Brook near to Bath. These surveys were conducted at a number of…
BART are excited to announce the 2017 Bristol Avon WaterBlitz, a campaign to collect as many water quality samples as possible in one week from the Bristol Avon and its…
Thanks to funding from the Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership, BART has been busy on the upper Somerset Frome since October working on our Diffuse Pollution Sediment Pathways Project. Sediment entering…
This #WorldWetlandsDay, some of the BART Team will be spending the day at Steart Marshes in Somerset continuing a vitally important project to monitor population levels of the European eel…
Thanks to funding from the Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership, BART will be working with 8 Riverfly monitors, 5 community groups, 5 schools and 5 farmers to monitor chemical water quality…
The Somerset Frome Diffuse Pollution Pathways project will use a risk grading approach to develop sediment pathway maps for the upper Somerset Frome (South of the town of Frome). To…
Dear all, Following a significant native white-clawed crayfish kill on the By Brook, Wiltshire in August/September, it has been confirmed that the crayfish sampled were infected with Aphanomyces astaci, which is…
The last month has seen two of our Riverfly Partnership monitors coming to us with a strange finding – lamprey larvae (or ‘ammocoetes’ as they are also known). One…
Whilst BART are out and about river dipping we often see freshwater shrimp (Gammarus) with these bright orange spots in their bodies – a sign of a spiny headed worm…
Thanks to everyone who took part in the Bristol Avon Water Blitz as part of the Festival of Nature 2016. Phosphate and nitrate samples were taken all over the catchment…
The eel is a critically endangered species, more endangered than the snow leopard and the tiger. Bristol is one of the leading European forces in saving the eel. As…
BART have completed a two year study of the By Brook catchment as part of a partnership project funded by the Environment Agency. The objectives of the project were…