The effectiveness of seed rain in recolonising an ecotonal mesic forest following extreme severity fire

As fire severity and extent increase, recovery of fire-sensitive species in plant communities may rely increasingly on seed rain and dispersal from adjacent unburnt areas. The role dispersal plays in driving recovery trajectories is surprisingly understudied. Additionally, how traits drive dispersal can contextualise compositional differences and indicate recovery trajectories. This paper investigated seed rain in recently burned mesic forest and the role of traits in driving post-fire recovery across a gradient of fire severities. We placed seed traps at two locations in the Blue Mountains, located in south-eastern Australia. We collected and identified all seeds that fell into seed traps each month for a year, three years following fire of differing severities. We compared species diversity of seed collections with extant vegetation and measured the minimum dispersal distance each species likely travelled. We used variable selection to identify how traits impacted dispersal distances...., , # Dryad dataset

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.cjsxksnjw](10.5061/dryad.cjsxksnjw)

## Preface

The following README provides information regarding two csv files containing the raw data for the manuscript ‘The effectiveness of seed rain in recolonising an ecotonal mesic forest following extreme severity fire’.

## Files and variables

## Dataset Title

SeedRain.csv

### Overview

This data set contains all raw data for seeds recovered from seed traps and related trait groupings for the manuscript ‘The effectiveness of seed rain in recolonising an ecotonal mesic forest following extreme severity fire’. The data is in the format of a csv.

### Table Columns

Site – Mt Wilson or Mt Tomah

SeverityGroup – Severity as described in the methods of the paper, (Unburnt, Low/Moderate, High/Extreme)

SeedTrapline – Row of seed traps, unique values based on site, severity, and distance from fire edge.

DistanceEdge – Distance from fire edge, numeric value, positive values indicate distance into burnt..., ,