LOW is a nationwide citizen science project for the ecological monitoring of watercourses (www.flow-projekt.de). In the project, citizen scientists from schools, environmental and fishing associations and other groups investigate the condition of small streams that are not or only insufficiently covered by official monitoring. In this way, we want to support water research and at the same time raise social awareness of the importance of and threats to our watercourses. From 2021 to 2023, over 90 groups with a total of more than 900 participants were involved in the FLOW project.
The citizen scientists examined 137 streams across Germany by assessing the water structure, measuring the chemical-physical water quality and determining the invertebrate community at the bottom of the water (macrozoobenthos). The scientifically verified FLOW data shows that the majority of the agricultural streams examined are in a poor ecological condition.
In this year's ARD join-in campaign, everyone is invited to rate the habitat quality of their streams using a short, easy-to-complete online questionnaire. Anyone can take part immediately, and over 2000 observations have already been received nationwide since May 2024. The results will be presented in the fall of 2024 in an ARD documentary, among other things.