Restoration of exploited lowland raised bogs recovered plant and invertebrate taxa richness and peatland specialists within a decade.

Peatlands represent important habitats for specialised species as well as vital carbon sinks. Ecological restoration of peatlands by government and NGOs has become an increasingly common approach to tackle their degradation, driven primarily by the climate change mitigation agenda targeting enhanced carbon storage and, secondarily, biodiversity conservation. We assessed biodiversity restoration of lowland raised bogs previously exploited for commercial horticulture substrate production. After industrial extraction, restoration of two exploited peatlands in Northern Ireland included laser-levelling, creation of bunded cells, seeding with donor material, and raising the water table to rewet each site in stages over a decade. Restored cells representing a 10-year chronosequence were compared to bare peat, unrestored areas, and protected, near-natural lowland raised bogs which were taken as reference sites. Bryophytes, including Sphagnum, and vascular plants recolonised rapidly, with peatla..., , # Data from: Restoration of exploited lowland raised bogs recovered plant and invertebrate taxa richness and peatland specialists within a decade.

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.wwpzgmt0f](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wwpzgmt0f)

## Description of the data and file structure

These data were collected in 2023 from 8 different sites in Northern Ireland. Vascular plants, Moss ID, and Invertebrate ID Tidied are all identification tables, where the column names are different taxa, and the row names are plots (identified with site name, location within the site, and microhabitat) and sample types (either *Sphagnum* or peat soil, in the case of Invertebrate ID). Moss ID also includes some liverworts. HA Plant Data is a filtered version of the combined vascular plant and bryophyte communities, including only those that were present in more than 10 % of samples. 

Vascular plant ID was undertaken in the field, and supplemented with photographs. Bryophyte identification was undertaken in the lab ..., ,