How does river
health change
from source to sea?
Why the Wye
A river under real pressure.
The River Wye was once famed for its salmon runs and clean water. Today it is on the critical list. Phosphate from intensive farming in the upper catchment and inadequately treated sewage in its lower reaches have triggered algal blooms across whole sections of the river. Atlantic salmon numbers have collapsed.
In 2021 it was removed from the list of the UK's best rivers for water quality. FLOW 001 will run and paddle the full contrast — from pristine upland source to pressured lowland estuary — kilometre by kilometre, and record what it finds.
The Series
FLOW 001 is a beginning, not an event.
The plan is to run a different river every year — same methodology, same measurements, comparable data. The Wye in 2026 is the starting point. Other rivers will follow.
Data collected at ground level, by running and paddling, using consistent methods, published openly. FLOW is an attempt to build a repeatable river record that no single organisation has produced in this form.
Scientific Approach
The same measurements, every day, the full length of the river.
Consistency matters more than complexity. The same protocol, at the same time each morning, with the same equipment throughout — producing comparable data across the entire river length.
Same instrument, same time window (09:00–10:00), every day. A record of thermal change from mountain bog to tidal estuary.
A direct indicator of agricultural run-off and suspended sediment. The river's clarity — or lack of it — recorded consistently each day.
A key marker of ecological health. Low dissolved oxygen is often the invisible cost of nutrient pollution — damage that doesn't show up in photographs.
All raw measurements published freely. Methodology designed with scientific partners and built to repeat on every future FLOW expedition.