Back to Ripple Springline
Springline Trust · catchment monitoring since 2016

The small waters, watched by the people who live beside them.

We are a small trust that helps volunteers keep an eye on springs and streams that official monitoring skips. Every reading is taken by hand, on a cold morning, by someone who shows up. None of it is gospel, so we tell you how sure we are. The map below is honest about the gaps.

Nine years of readings · run by two part-time staff and a lot of volunteers
52
Monitoring sites
across 6 catchments
0
Readings logged
since spring 2016
0
Active guardians
6 sites need one
0
In the validation queue
checked most Sundays
Live explorer

The monitoring map

Every point is a site a volunteer watches. Colour is its current health. The map is deliberately uneven: coverage follows who adopted a site, not where the water most needs watching.

Catchment
Status
52 of 52 sites
Catchment map · illustrative
Stylised catchment diagram. Placeless. Not a real location.
Sites Most recent first
Coverage is uneven on purpose. Funding follows whoever will pay, not where the water needs watching, so some catchments are dense and others have a single lonely site or none at all.
SL-014 · Northvale Beck catchment

Aldercress Spring

Latest reading
This site
Trends · monthly, multi-year
Water claritylatest 1.9 mHigher is clearer. Seasonal: clearer in summer, murkier after winter rain.
Temperaturelatest 11.4 °CCool and steady suits native life. Watch for summer spikes.
Nitratelatest 0.8 mg/LLower is better. The dashed line is where the kit changed in 2022.
The 2022 method change

The nitrate test was upgraded in March 2022 when a council grant paid for better kit. Readings before that line were taken with the old strips and run a little high. Do not read across the break as a single trend. We keep the old numbers because they still show direction, not because they match.

Recent readings
DateClarityTempNitrateBugsConfidence
For guardians

Log a streamside reading

This is the form a volunteer fills in standing by the water, usually one-handed in the cold. Keep it short. It saves as provisional and waits for a check before it counts.

Step 1 of 2

Your reading

Three numbers and a quick bug count. If you are not sure on one, leave a note rather than guess.

Pick the site you sampled.
How far down you can still see the tube disc. Enter clarity as a number, roughly 0 to 3 metres.
Hold the thermometer in the flow for a minute. Enter temperature in °C, roughly 2 to 25.
Most kits read in mg/L of nitrate (NO3), which is what we want here. Some strips read nitrate-nitrogen (NO3-N) instead, which is a smaller number. If your strip says NO3-N, pop it in below and we will convert it.
–
We multiply NO3-N by 4.43. Roughly.
Enter nitrate in mg/L, roughly 0 to 10.
8
A rough tally of the little creatures under a few stones. More kinds usually means healthier water. An estimate is fine.
Add a quick photoHelps the team sense-check a reading.
Nothing is sent. This is a concept.

When you submit, this is logged as a provisional reading. It shows on the site straight away with a provisional flag, and one of the team checks it (usually the next Sunday) before it counts as validated. We know waiting is annoying. It is the price of a dataset councils will trust.

Saved as provisional

Reference SL-LOG-000000

Thanks for showing up. Your reading for this site is logged and visible now, flagged provisional.

It is number 13 in the validation queue

It is not confirmed yet. One of the team will check it against the site's history, usually by next Sunday, and then it becomes validated. You will see the flag change on the site.

For councils and researchers

Download a catchment dataset

Pick a catchment to export its readings as CSV. You get the validated dataset by default, with the confidence flags kept and the 2022 method note attached. We would rather you cite it carefully than not at all.

Choose a catchment

What you will get

CatchmentNorthvale Beck
Sites in export8
Readings (rows)0
Date span2016 to 2025
FormatCSV, UTF-8
Read before you cite: the 2022 method change

The nitrate test changed in March 2022. Pre-2022 nitrate was measured on rougher strips and runs high. It is not directly comparable with the post-2022 figures, so do not draw a single nitrate trend across the break. Each row carries a method column (strip-2016 or photometric-2022) so you can split it cleanly.

Clarity and temperature are consistent throughout. Only nitrate has the break.

Concept export. Nothing downloads. In the live tool this produces a CSV plus a one-page data note.
Northvale Beck export is ready

Validated readings only, confidence flags kept, the 2022 method note bundled in as a README. In the live tool this would land in your downloads now.

springline_northvale-beck_2016-2025.csv ~ 84 KB
A real gap

This catchment has no sites yet

Not every stream is watched. This is one of the gaps the map is honest about. Here is what that looks like, and how it changes.

The Slowwater Marshes
0 monitoring sites · no guardians · lowland, hard to reach
Needs guardians
NO SITES HERE YET Stylised diagram. Placeless. Not a real location.

The honest answer: we do not know

No one has adopted a site here, so we have no readings to show. It is lowland and awkward to reach, which is exactly the kind of place that slips through. A stream with no guardian is not a healthy stream or an unhealthy one. It is an unwatched one.

Start a site here

A new site needs one willing person and a test kit. The kit costs about the price of a weekly shop, which is why we ask people to adopt the cost. Borrow one from a hub if you would rather not buy. We will mark the spot and show you the routine once.

The real call to action

The map has gaps because kit costs money and guardians move on.

We are not chasing growth. We are trying to keep the sites we have alive and fill a few of the worst gaps. Adopting a site covers a year of test kit. Becoming a guardian brings a dormant site back. Our backbone grant is up for renewal next spring, so honestly, both matter more than usual right now.