Macroinvertebrate community changes in response to riparian revegetation activities and land cover using historical datasets

Enhancing the scientific understanding of restoration processes is complicated, with financial and organisational limitations to the widespread use of before-after-control-impact studies, and challenges to the long-term collection and storage of data on historical restorations for use in broad-scale analyses. To conduct a broad-scale analysis of historical revegetation activities in southeastern Australia, we collated and standardised past riparian revegetation extents, combined with contemporaneous ecological (macroinvertebrate assemblages), environmental and land cover information from 2000 to 2012. The analyses demonstrated that upstream riparian activity age and cumulative lengths have an effect on macroinvertebrate community assemblages. Whilst these effects include changes to macroinvertebrate community diversity and evenness, this relationship is overshadowed by catchment-scale land cover factors, particularly the percentage of exotic pasture and native tree cover. The data was also used to interrogate changes in macroinvertebrate communities following the removal of invasive willow trees. This research demonstrates the utility of standardising historical datasets, provides recommendations for the future storage and consistent formatting of restoration data entry by natural resource management practitioners for use in future spatial analyses.