We reviewed river rehabilitation studies published from 1984 to 2019 to identify factors that might limit effective rehabilitation. This encompasses 89 papers that reported outcomes of 379 independent projects. We found that methods used to evaluate the outcomes of rehabilitation projects may have failed to properly assess the outcomes, which has led to a poor diagnosis of both the “problem” and the effectiveness of any “solution”. We identified four methodological limitations that have often precluded the rigorous assessment of the effectiveness of stream rehabilitation:

(1)

The most comprehensive Before–After–Control–Impact (BACI) study design was not common practice.

(2)

Most studies sampled rivers for only one season following rehabilitation, and therefore could not account for seasonal or annual variations that could affect macroinvertebrate community composition.

(3)

Multi-habitat sampling – to comprehensively represent macroinvertebrate communities in study reaches – was rarely applied.

(4)

The most commonly employed indicators of rehabilitation success were macroinvertebrate taxa richness and diversity, even though these measures may fail to identify other consequential changes in ecosystem structure and function. Ecosystem functional indicators such as macroinvertebrate Functional Feeding Group (FFG) and Ephemeroptera–Plecoptera–Trichoptera (EPT) diversity, density, biomass and secondary production often had better responses, but were rarely assessed.

我们回顾了1984年至2019年发布的河流修复研究，以确定可能限制有效修复的因素。其中包括89篇论文，报告了379个独立项目的成果。我们发现，用于评估康复项目成果的方法可能无法正确评估成果，从而导致对“问题”和任何“解决方案”的有效性均缺乏诊断。我们确定了四种方法学上的局限性，这些局限性通常导致无法对溪流修复的有效性进行严格的评估：

（1）

最全面的“前后控制影响”研究设计并不常见。

（2）

大多数研究仅在恢复后的一个季节对河流进行采样，因此无法解释可能影响大型无脊椎动物群落组成的季节或年度变化。

（3）

很少使用多栖息地抽样来全面代表研究范围内的无脊椎动物群落。

（4）

恢复成功的最常用指标是大型无脊椎动物类群的丰富度和多样性，尽管这些措施可能无法确定生态系统结构和功能的其他相应变化。生态系统功能指标，如大型无脊椎动物功能性进食组（FFG）和E翅目–鞘翅目–鞘翅目（EPT）的多样性，密度，生物量和次级生产通常具有较好的响应，但很少进行评估。