The Evidence and Engagement (EE) team at WRT is made up of just under 20 members of staff, bringing together two closely connected areas of work: generating robust evidence about our rivers and waterbodies, and fostering meaningful public engagement with them.

Dr Nicola Rodgers leads the Data and Evidence side of the team, which includes the monitoring team, which is responsible for measuring a range of water quality parameters, and the GIS and Data team, who produce maps for both WRT colleagues and external organisations, alongside managing data collation and visualisation.

One exciting example of the work coming out of this side of the team is ENFORCE, a large-scale European partnership initiative that aims to safeguard the environment by promoting compliance through citizen science and technological innovation. WRT is leading the UK case study, focused on water quality in East Devon, working alongside partners from the University of Exeter and Bielefeld University.

Dr Fran Rowley and Dr Holly Pearson from the EE team at the ENFORCE conference in Greece last year.

Doug Munford, Head of Resilience and Communities, leads the engagement side of the team, overseeing the development and delivery of WRT’s education and volunteering programmes, as well as a range of projects designed to improve public engagement and river literacy. The citizen science volunteering programme has been running since 2016, with over 1,600 dedicated volunteers collectively uploading more than 32,000 surveys. This contribution has helped raise public awareness of local waterbodies, generated the data behind our annual waterbody scorecards, and nurtured a real sense of community among those involved.

Day-to-day work across the EE team is highly varied – even within a single role, no two weeks look quite the same. Jenny Wytcherley gives a flavour of what that looks like:

“As Project Officer for the Tamar Catchment Partnership, which is hosted by WRT, part of my role involves bringing together a wide range of organisations, groups, and individuals to collaborate on improving the ecological health and resilience of the catchment. This includes opportunities for partners to showcase their work and connect with one another. I also work as a Cross-Trust Project Officer, supporting colleagues with project tasks such as sourcing and collating data, literature reviews, and reporting, as well as contributing to the GIS and Data team to help create maps and process data.”

The Evidence and Engagement team is where science and community genuinely meet – and the rivers are better for it.