Kate Heppell, a Professor of Physical Geography specialising in water quality and hydrology and currently seconded from School of Geography in Queen Mary University of London to the Chilterns Chalk Streams Project gave a presentation on her work entitled “Tracking Water Quality—” A Co-designed Online Observatory for the River Chess”.

Kate’s research is focused on the transport and transformation of contaminants and pollutants as they move through lowland river catchments and undergo exchanges at the interface of land, water and atmosphere.

Graham Roberts, Chair of the Upper Itchen Initiative reported on the numerous issues this group has been involved with since the last Forum, including ongoing concerns regarding sewage, abstraction and phosphorus levels. He also updated on the Riverfly Monitoring initiative, White-clawed Crayfish Conservation and the Southern Chalkstreams and Watercress & Winterbournes projects.

Finally, PhD students outlined their research progress in pre-recorded films:

• Jen Ball (University of Southampton), one of the Vitacress Conservation Trust sponsored PhD researchers, gave a short update on her work “Ecosystem Services in Chalk Streams”. As part of her research Jen also led a workshop after the Forum which about 25 of the Forum delegates volunteered to attend. The workshop built on some of Jen’s previous research on drivers of change for chalk streams, with Jen leading a process to look at aspirations for the Test and Itchen, working through how these might be realised.
• Another VCT part sponsored PhD researcher, Kieran Gething, Nottingham Trent University outlined his work which is focussed on recognising and protecting the aquatic-terrestrial biodiversity of dynamic river ecosystems.
• Lauren Hibbert, a Vitacress sponsored PhD student studying molecular breeding of watercress at the University of Southampton and the University of California, Davis presented her project entitled “Developing watercress with improved phosphate use efficiency”.