DOI: 10.5061/dryad.547d7wm8f
title: Mitigation of urbanisation effects on aquatic ecosystems by synchronous ecological restoration

description: Ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss have been caused by economic
 booms in developing countries over recent decades. In response, ecosystem
 restoration projects have been advanced in some countries but the
 effectiveness of different approaches and indicators at large
 spatio-temporal scales (i.e., whole catchments) remains poorly understood.
 Our datasets with a diverse array of 440 aquatic restoration projects
 including wastewater treatment, constructed wetlands, plant/algae salvage,
 and dredging of contaminated sediments implemented and maintained from
 2007 to 2017 across more than 2000km2 of the northwest Taihu basin
 (Yixing, China). Synchronized investigations of water quality and
 invertebrate communities were conducted before and after restoration. Our
 datasets showed that even though there was rapid urbanization at this
 time, nutrient concentrations (NH4+-N, TN, TP) and biological indices of
 benthic invertebrates (taxonomic richness, Shannon diversity, sensitive
 taxon density) improved significantly across most of the study area.
 Improvements were associated with the type of restoration project, with
 projects targeting pollution sources leading to the clearest ecosystem
 responses compared with those remediating pollution sinks. However, in
 some locations, the recovery of biotic communities appears to lag behind
 nutrients (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorus), likely reflecting long-distance
 re-colonization routes for invertebrates given the level of
 pre-restoration degradation of the catchment.
description: We collected the data of restoration projects from the
 Development and Reform Commission of Jiangsu province. And monitored the
 recovery of 63 locations by sampling each site both before (2007) and
 after (2017) the implementation of the restoration works, indices include
 benthic macroinvertebrates and water nutrients.
description: # Mitigation of urbanisation effects on aquatic ecosystems by synchronous
 ecological restoration
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.547d7wm8f](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.547d7wm8f) This repository contains datasets as well as the R-code used in our study: 1. The response ratio of water nutrients and macroinvertebrates indices between 2007 and 2017 ("waterDATA.xlsx"). wNH3_N, the response ratio of NH4+-N in the natural water between 2007 and 2017; wTN, the response ratio of TN in the natural water between 2007 and 2017; wTP, the response ratio of TP in the natural water between 2007 and 2017; H', Shannon–Wiener index of macroinvertebrates between 2007 and 2017; beta.sim, turnover dissimilarity of macroinvertebrates between 2007 and 2017; beta.nes, nestedness dissimilarity of macroinvertebrates between 2007 and 2017; beta.sor, Sørensen dissimilarity of macroinvertebrates between 2007 and 2017; TaxaRichness, response ratio of taxonomic richness of macroinvertebrates between 2007 and 2017; FBI, response ratio of the Hilsenhoff Family Biotic Index between 2007 and 2017; rOligochaeta, response ratio of percent Oligochaeta between 2007 and 2017. 2. The restoration project data ("Poject_data.xlsx"): the restoration projects implemented and maintained from 2007 to 2017 in Yixing, China. Investment, main measures, and project scale, longitude, latitude, etc. were included in this file. Data in grey were not used because there were no specific measures, or project scale or those measures couldn’t be calculated and converted into the removal quantity of nitrogen and phosphorus. 3. The response ratio of the impervious surface area between 2007 and 2017, when the spatial moving window radius is 6000 km: ("R6000_rISA.csv"). ID: the generated 4080 spatial moving windows' ID; rISA: the response ratio of the impervious surface area between 2007 and 2017. 4. The R-code ("Cleancode_afu.R") was used to analyse the relationship between restoration projects, water quality, and the expansion of urbanization. NA in all the files means data is not available because of sample analysis problems or they couldn't be calculated by the limited samples. If anything is not clear, please contact Hong Fu: [fuhong@ihb.ac.cn](mailto:fuhong@ihb.ac.cn)