The Habitat impacts, Invasive species and Barriers to migration (HIB) project brings together three programmes involving walkover surveys in selected river catchments.
Since 2008, seven catchments in the Foyle area – covering 407kms of river corridor – have been surveyed this way.
The project’s original objectives were to:
- record the location and type of barriers to fish migration
- record the abundance and distribution of riverside invasive species, especially Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed.
The project was expanded in 2013 to include gathering information on habitat impacts. Studies were combined into one integrated walkover survey to make the best possible use of available resources.
Information- gathering methods have evolved over time, from keeping paper records to using the latest GPS technology. Data can be examined by our Geographical Information System and used to monitor change.
Since 2017, the information has been collected using SIM enabled GPS loggers and mobile phones. These update our internal web viewer with the results in real-time. The information collected includes point data on habitat impacts and barriers, polygon data on invasive species distribution and line data highlighting the length of river corridor surveyed.