Editing A12. Modular River Survey (MoRPh, RCA) (section)

==2. Method summary== 
The MoRPh survey is available as a citizen science survey tool. It also forms a component of the River Condition Assessment (RCA) method that contributes to Natural England’s Biodiversity Metric (https://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/6049804846366720).

Guidance on Health and Safety is provided during training courses and is presented in the MoRPh Technical Manual. Surveyors are required to adhere to their organisation’s detailed Health and Safety procedures when undertaking MoRPh surveys.

The MoRPh survey is undertaken from one or more locations on the river’s bank top. It captures detailed physical habitat information for 10 to 40 m lengths of stream or river (termed modules), where the module length depends upon the width of the river channel. The RCA methodology additionally allows 50 m survey lengths for canals, navigable rivers and large rivers (i.e. water courses where the channel width is too great and/or the water is too deep or cloudy for the river bed to be surveyed in detail). 

The MoRPh survey ‘form’ can be completed on paper and subsequently uploaded to the Modular River Survey Information System, or can be completed via an ‘App’.
The survey commences by locating the start and end points and the bank-top midpoint of the module to be surveyed. Three photographs are taken from the mid-point to capture the channel and bank immediately opposite the midpoint, the upstream and the downstream parts of the module. In some cases, it is not possible to take satisfactory photographs from the midpoint and so photographs can be taken from other locations to capture the nature of the module being surveyed. Up to six photographs can be uploaded to accompany each module survey, and photograph subjects and locations are recorded on the survey form to support survey data checking, approval and interpretation, and also as an aid to accurate re-location of modules when the survey is repeated for monitoring purposes.

The MoRPh form is comprised of four pages. The first page captures general information on the surveyor, survey date, survey location (including National Grid Reference or latitude-longitude of the mid-point), module length, channel dimensions, photograph locations and contents, and any other general comments regarding the survey. 

The remaining three survey pages record information on the bank tops (within 10 m of the channel), the bank faces and the channel bed, respectively. The survey pages capture the entire area within each of these spatial units along the length of the surveyed module. Each sheet provides a check list of features that may be observed within the relevant area (bank top, bank face, bed). The features are grouped on each sheet according to vegetation morphology-structure, sediments, physical habitats-landforms, human interventions and pressures. The surveyor selects those features from each list that are observed within the module under consideration and records each feature’s abundance using an appropriate semi-quantitative scale.  In this way, a comprehensive survey is assembled of the set of features that are present and their abundance within the entire module.