The article I found in the library is titled “Plant Community Recovery following Restoration in Temporally Variable Riparian Wetlands,” done by Meyer, Whiles and Baer and published in Restoration Ecology in 2010. The research topic was the effectiveness of river/wetland restoration projects done on the Platte river, which is located within the Great Plains, with the study area in southern Nebraska. Over three years they monitored several sites that had been restored at various times, including three natural sites that had never been disturbed for comparison. Their research question was “[Do] measures of community structure (richness, diversity) …increase with time since restoration [of wetlands]?” They found that over time the restored wetlands indeed had more plants, but that undisturbed wetlands and older restored wetlands actually had less richness and diversity than newly restored wetlands. I would put their data into the category of events/acts, as they were measuring mainly plant growth and water levels, which are things that happen. They gathered this data through observation of the sites, visiting them at certain intervals to count numbers and species of plants at each site. They used various forms of statistical analysis to compare the plant communities of the sites with each other and over time. Another significant finding from this research was that there were many challenges in getting a comparison of the wetlands based only on time since restoration, because there were many other variables in this natural experiment, such as soil composition, precipitation differences and management. Even though this study faced a lot of challenges, the resulting findings that diversity actually did not increase over time seems valid and interesting to me, and I think it could potentially be a part of a broader study of how to go about restoring and managing wetlands in this particular area, answering a “how to” research question.

Reference:

Meyer, C.K., Whiles, M.R., Baer S.G. (2008). Plant community recovery following restoration    in temporally variable riparian wetlands. Restoration Ecology. 18(1), 52-64. doi:10.1111/j.1526-100x.2008.00451.x