��Recovering the Lark�. ​

Citizen Science, Restoration, and Partnership

Ros Alexander

Chair of Trustees

River Lark Catchment Partnership

The River Lark and its Tributaries

Four national landscape characteristic areas:

• Clay farmland overlaying chalk
• Chalk downland
• Brecks
• Fens

River �Restoration

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Installing large

woody material to

improve sinuosity and

Kickstart natural processes

Water Quality Monitoring�

High levels of Ammonia and Phosphate discovered in tributary headwaters during a routine training and monitoring event, March 2024

Training our volunteers

• River Fly monitoring
• Mudspotter
• Water Safety
• First Aid

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Diversifying our volunteers�

• Year 5, Guildhall Feoffment Primary School, Bury St Edmunds

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• Water testing in Abbey Gardens as part of the development of a new school science curriculum

Research and development partnership with CaSTCo – Catchment Systems Thinking Co-operative�

Part of the prototype app interface for CS water monitoring

Partnership with Geodata (University of Southampton), �and the EA�

Fluvial Audit of the River Lark

Partnership with Anglian Water and Norfolk Rivers Trust: Preparation for ‘Flagship’, 2025

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• GIS mapping of the catchment

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• Planning a programme of restoration works

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• Evidence based and evidence gathering projects

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• Large grant applications

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Hearts and Minds

Why do citizen scientists do what they do?

Matt Gaw, The Pull of the River, London, 2018

‘This river [the Lark], widened, narrowed, sucked dry, polluted, ignored and forgotten, still stirs up spirituality. It still has power. It can still be resurrected.’ p. 90

A Genealogy of Transformation theory

• 1928 - Frederick Griffiths’s discovery that a bacterium can be ‘transformed’ by absorbing material (later identified as DNA) from another bacterium
• 1978
• Jack Mezirow, ‘Transformational Learning’
• a disorientating experience; critical reflection; leading to an ability to think autonomously
• James MacGregor Burns, ‘Transformational Leadership’
• Antonio Damasio The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness, 1999
• Cognitive neuroscience research and the ‘embodied brain’
• Thinking through emotions
• Social change
• Organisational change

�Existential threats - and how to solve them

• Climate change
• Social inequality
• Urgent need to reflect and find a way of doing things differently

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• Conference workshop activities over lunch and this afternoon
• Clara’s river map of memories, hopes, care, and stories

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• Discussion tables