River pollution is a major threat to water quality and ecosystems, and understanding pollution sources and how they mix is vital to creating effective pollution management. Alex O’Brien from UKCEH describes a project testing a new approach to tracing where the pollution comes from…

Given the complexity of river mixing, using multiple methods together simultaneously will help to unpick these complex processes.

We planned to combine three different survey methods: in-river sampling from a kayak, the remote-controlled ARC-Boat equipped with water quality sondes, an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and GPS for bathymetric mapping, and an infrared imaging drone survey. It was a lot to coordinate!