Field services & hydrometry

We provide a comprehensive suite of field surveys to support your projects.

Our expertise includes:

• River flow monitoring (both spot measurements and continuous river flow gauging) to refine estimates of resource availability within ungauged catchments. Common examples of project requiring these services include:
  • resource assessment to support hydropower design
  • confirm baseline information for environmental impact assessments
  • Investigation of potential impacts of current abstractions upon river flows
  Frequently, monitoring programmes are relatively short term and it is necessary to combine measured, at site data with longer historical records at established gauging stations within hydrologically similar (commonly termed analogue) catchments. We have well proven techniques for using and extracting the maximum information from short-record data at a site by reference to data from analogue catchments.
• Water chemistry measurements and laboratory analysis. For many proposed developments understanding the existing hydrochemical status of streams that may be affected by the development, and the sensitivity of that status to the proposed development is an important step in establishing the baseline conditions for an environmental statement. We provide a comprehensive baseline assessment of the chemistry of rivers for developers pre consent, and can provide monitoring services during both the construction and post construction periods.
• Physical habitat mapping. Developments that require in channel working/construction or that will result in a change to the flow regime of a river may modify the instream physical habitat available to aquatic flora and fauna. We can provide services for mapping physical habitat availability and collection of the baseline data required for modelling potential changes to physical habitat within modelling packages such as the PHABSIM suite of software tools.

Examples of previous field services provided by WHS include:

• Full assessment of resource availability to support resource availability and determination of environmental reserves for hydropower schemes.
• Estabilshment of baseline hydrochemical status and interpretation of that status for headwater streams draining sites proposed for renewable energy parks. Hydrochemical aspects covered include: acidity (pH), alkalinity, nutrient status, trace metals.
• The surveying of Salmon and Lamprey physical habitat availability over nearly 16.5 km of the Gala Water, a tributary to the Tweed SAC, as part of an appropriate assessment under the Habitats Regulations.
• Collation of habitat and channel structure data and subsequent application of the PHABSIM habitat model to assess the potential impacts on target fish species and invertebrate communities within headwater catchments of the Ely Ouse – Essex inter-basin transfer scheme.
• Support for determining surface-groundwater interactions under NERC's Lowland Catchment Research Program (LOCAR). This work involved an intensive monitoring program of surface water flow, temperature and water chemistry (Radon, pH, alkalinity, CO2, and conductivity).