Abstract
Riparian areas have been a focus of restoration works as they provide important habitats (terrestrial and in-stream), create habitat connection through corridors and affect in-stream water quality. Previously, on ground works have consisted mainly of tree planting and weed control rather than re-creating vegetation structure and habitat diversity. Restored riparian areas of different ages (2, 7 and 10 years old), reference sites (representing original condition) and control sites (representing degraded, pre-restoration conditions) were evaluated and graded using vegetation structure and ant functional groups. The study focuses on terrestrial vegetation and biodiversity rather than instream areas such as bank and aquatic invertebrates. The sites are located in a relatively small geographic area in Kin Kin and Pomona, in the Noosa and Mary River Catchments respectively. The study aims to grade the restored zones on a scale from degraded to relatively intact systems to determine their potential habitat function and quality at different ages. Vegetation structure is a measure of habitat diversity, whilst functional ant groups will indicate if the habitat provision in restored areas is more similar to intact or degraded conditions. The study also aims to put a timeframe on recovery processes and develop a scale on which site recovery can be graded. Additionally, inadequacies (and ways of improving) current restoration methods will be identified. Preliminary results indicate that many of the degraded areas that are dominated by weed tree species (for example, Camphor Laurel) have better vegetation structure than restored areas. Additionally the degraded areas provide a greater variety of habitat for ant species, increasing the potential for diversity.