Protected areas promote recovery in degraded European rivers

The datasets here were used to examine relationships between riverine invertebrate ecological quality (measured as EQR) and protected areas across Europe during 1986-2021. Here, we provide the spatial and temporal EQR and protected area values, in addition to information on initial EQRs, catchment size, anthropogenic land use, and other control variables. The first sheet ("Data") provides the data for each site used in our analyses. The second sheet ("Info") provides a summary and explanation of each variable. Further information on how values were calculated (and transformed if necessary) is provided in either the Info tab or the methods and supporting information of the associated article.