Courses
A complete course on river catchments — Fundamental modules build the foundations, Advanced modules go deep on survey methodology.
A complete course on river catchments — Fundamental modules build the foundations, Advanced modules go deep on survey methodology.
Countryside Management Training's online courses cover a wide range of topics, together forming a complete course on river catchments — biodiversity, sources and impacts of pollution, assessing water quality through macroinvertebrates, water quality sampling, and mitigation and enhancement techniques, across bogs, wetlands, lakes, and rivers.
All sectors of the community can use the training — from citizen volunteer groups to farmers — delivered by expert presenters out in the field through high-definition video. With a dedicated team of experts, CMT is constantly innovating and evolving our online offering.
Every module traces back to one thing — the health of a river catchment. Here's the full breadth of what that covers.
CAS Survey — using the Catchment Assessment Score, CMT's own electronic survey app, built in-house by our team. Mapping of survey data. Water sampling.
Techniques for identifying rivers failing to achieve good water quality status using invertebrates. Mapping of river water quality status using data from the Biotic Index and CAS Survey, in conjunction with CMT's electronic apps.
The building blocks — each course stands alone, and together they cover the full range of aquatic and terrestrial habitats CMT surveys.
Possible dangers when working in or near water — risk assessment and equipment for safer working practice, waterborne and outdoor-associated diseases including Lyme disease, Weil's disease, Hepatitis A, and skin cancer, and the health risks of blue-green algae linked to nutrient pollution.
Irish rivers and lakes from source to mouth — river morphology, the varying characteristics of a range of lake and river habitats and their associated flora and fauna, and the water-quality pressures, including nutrient pollution and eutrophication, that threaten them.
How invasive flora and fauna affect the ecosystems they establish in, and why they're so successful — with a final unit on biosecurity in aquatic environments.
How to kick-sample and identify the macroinvertebrates found in rivers and lakes, and how their differing tolerance to pollution feeds into the Citizen Science Stream Index method for assessing water quality.
Alongside the Fundamental course, the Advanced units build an extensive catchment management qualification, with an emphasis on determining water quality status through survey and water sampling.
The Small Stream Risk Score (SSRS) is a biological risk assessment system using macroinvertebrate surveys to determine water quality status — with HD video identifying every invertebrate group in stunning, close-up detail.
The Catchment Assessment Score (CAS) evaluates the hydromorphological condition of rivers — assessing and completing a CAS survey, and its importance to overall catchment health.
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