With the FlussFloßForschen (RiverRaftResearch) project a big dream is becoming reality. In the last few years I had to minimize my activities within the River Collective, since I was starting my own company. Running a big wooden raft with a bar on top up and down the damned stretch of the river Mur in Graz was both: a physical and mental challenge but also a very rewarding journey. From the very start, the idea to use this opportunity to establish a place for river education and citizen science the widely degraded Mur river kept on growing. Winning a grant from the FFG, Austria finally gave the right push to bringing these ideas alive.
The River Collective in collaboration with Die Flößerei, the Institute of Ecology of the University of Innsbruck, the University of Education Styria, and the innovation-consultant Magnetberg developed a project that aims to inspire children and young people to take an interest in the fascinating world of rivers and water research and to spark their interest in a future career in this field.
A series of workshops takes children, aged between 8-13, on the raft, on virtual and imaginary journeys and a field excursion on a more natural stream. The children are experiencing the river with all senses, measuring physical parameters with ropes and weights, painting the river’s color, exploring the wildlife, catching macroinvertebrates, playing with a stream table, starting to develop their own river conservation project and more. The first round is coming to an end as I am writing these lines.
Parallel to the school workshops, a scientist UIBK and participant of the very first Students for Rivers Camp, has installed a Sensor at the dock of our big raft to monitor the water quality of the Mur. The employees of the Flößerei are being trained to take regular water samples and do some simple water tests at site. Officials from the city’s authorities are already knocking on our doors for collaboration in terms of making the Mur river swimmable in the near future. We are excited for what’s to come!
Photo: LippZahnschirm
