Colombia River Stories Datasets Archive, 1994-2020

The goal of the project is the environmental monitoring of water resources using an innovative and multi-disciplinary methodology that brings social scientists and natural scientists together - integrating their research methods and techniques to capture human stories through community-level, participatory research and the river's story through field-based scientific monitoring and environmental reconstruction and mapping. The social science data of the project includes in-depth life history style interviews with individuals from the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities of the Atrato. The project used purposive sampling, recruiting participants through local contacts and then ‘snowballing’ for additional participants. As part of our citizen science programme, monitoring of the Rio Quito was carried out on a weekly basis by a local community. The monitoring consisted of measurement of in-situ parameters (turbidity, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and temperature) and water sampling of Rio Quito. They also monitored the bacterial contamination of their drinking water. The hydrogeochemical data sets were based on a range of analytical results carried out on water (river and rain) and soil (riverbank and river bottom) samples, predominantly from the Rio Quito and the town of Quibdo. The parameters being acquired were the water temperature, pH, specific electrical conductivity (SEC), total dissolved solids (TDS), oxidation reduction potential (ORP), dissolved oxygen (DO), alkalinity, major anion and cations, water stable isotopes and suite of dissolved and total metals in water. The satellite images archive consists of temporal satellite images between 1994- 2020 that were pre-processed and processed in order to highlight changes that were observed along the river bank due to anthropogenic action. A temporal change detection analysis has been evaluated by highlighting the observed changes through time. Atrato Subcatchment Sediment Load Estimation & analysis of mining impacts on the planform of the Rio Quito quantifies the ways and extent to which alluvial gold mining in the Chocó has impacted the geomorphological form and function of the rivers in which it occurs. It specifically focusses on the assessment of mining impacts on: 1. total river sediment loads; 2. river suspended sediment concentration and turbidity; 3. river channel planform. The results presented contribute to the wider project objective of understanding the ways in which mining-driven changes to river form and function intersect with, and influence, the socio-economic, social-political, and socio-cultural systems that drive alluvial gold mining and conflict in the Chocó.