YOU CAN HE TABS ON RIV

resources in the future”.

On the ground, Anelile Gibixego, a water-quality science intern at GroundTruth, tries to get as many people as possible, including schools, involved in the project.

She says at this stage only computers, and not cellphones, can load the data, posing a problem in disadvantaged areas.

Gibixego is also looking at the school syllabus to determine any overlap possibilities with citizenscientist river testing.

Graham says South Africa is a world leader in biomonitoring techniques using macroinvertebrates.

This started in the 1980s when scientists looked at taking naturally occurring insect fauna in our rivers and using them as indicators of the health or condition of these systems.

The most successful of these biomonitoring techniques was the South African Scoring System version 5 (SASS5).

Since then, the miniSASS version has been adapted for citizen scientists.

“Where SASS5 contains over 90 different macroinvertebrates, miniSASS has only 13 different groups, allowing for simpler identification and understanding.

“One of the key strengths of the miniSASS technique is that the results it produces are very similar to the full SASS technique,” says Graham.