Macroinvertebrate taxonomic abundance, water quality, river flow, air temperature and environmental site descriptors from English rivers, 1965-2018, version 2.0

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This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

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https://doi.org/10.5285/23f194b0-1e21-4f14-be9c-6eabdcc1feb7

This is the most recent version of this dataset

This data product combines macroinvertebrate taxonomic abundance for 1,519 monitoring sites across English rivers for the period between 1965 and 2018, with matched concentrations of 41 water quality determinands, river flow exceedance statistics, and air temperature values. It also includes site variables such as sewage effluent exposure, habitat quality, land cover in the upstream catchment, and other physical parameters measured at the sampling point, such as altitude, slope, distance from source, width and depth of the channel, and type of substrate.

Developed as part of the ChemPop (2018-2023), a NERC-funded project investigating the impact of chemical exposure on wildlife populations in rivers, this research output is an open data product for use in a broad spectrum of environmental data and modelling analyses.

Publication date: 2025-03-24

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View numbers valid from 24 March 2025 Download numbers valid from 24 March 2025 (information prior to this was not collected)

Format

Comma-separated values (CSV)

Spatial information

Study area

Spatial representation type

Tabular (text)

Spatial reference system

OSGB 1936 / British National Grid

Temporal information

Temporal extent

1965-01-01 to 2018-12-31

Provenance & quality

This data product was created by preprocessing and combining survey data of national extent collected by the Environment Agency (EA), such as freshwater macroinvertebrate survey data, water quality data, habitat quality metrics, and river flow; as well as datasets produced by UKCEH, such as the Land Cover Map 2015, CHESS-met air temperature, and estimated sewage effluent exposure.

The spatial distribution of this product matches the spatial extent of the macroinvertebrate data. Its time stamps correspond to the dates of macroinvertebrate sampling. The completeness of this product is determined by the spatio-temporal availability of the data sources.

Due to the different structures and file formats of the data sources, as well as the varied range of technical skills within our team, a range of file manipulation tools were used. However, the same data processing and data integration methodology was followed in all instances. This involved three steps: first, spatial matching of sampled locations along the river network; second, spatial integration of model-generated variables, including wastewater effluent, land cover, and air temperature; and third, temporal matching of environmental observations, such as water quality concentrations and river flow, along with modelled variables such as air temperature.

Licensing and constraints

This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

Cite this dataset as:

Bachiller-Jareno, N.; Keller, V.D.J.; Eastman, M.; Edwards, F.K.; Jürgens, M.D.; Scarlett, P.M.; Rizzo, C.; Antoniou, V.; Dean, H.J.; Sadykova, D.; Qu, Y.; Johnson, A.C. (2025). Macroinvertebrate taxonomic abundance, water quality, river flow, air temperature and environmental site descriptors from English rivers, 1965-2018, version 2.0. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/23f194b0-1e21-4f14-be9c-6eabdcc1feb7

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