Assessing the recovery gap in forest restoration within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Biodiversity serves as a proxy for numerous ecosystem services that can be realized through forest restoration, benefitting both people and the environment. We investigated the magnitude of biodiversity recovery incompleteness (i.e., the recovery gap) in forest restoration within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, hereafter referred to as the Atlantic Forest. We conducted meta-analysis to analyze how species richness and species abundance of soil microorganisms, invertebrates and vascular plants, as well as the vegetation structure, recover across major gradients in environmental conditions and human-caused disturbances. Our study shows that forest restoration in the Atlantic Forest faces a notable biodiversity gap in species richness across both passive and active restoration areas. However, the vegetation structure could potentially reach reference levels within 25 to 50 years. Forest type influenced the recovery of species abundance in active restoration areas, with dense forests display..., Literature search and data gathering
We searched the peer-reviewed literature available on Web of Science (SCI-E, SSCI, and ESCI), Scopus, CAB Direct, and SciELO. We also used Google Scholar as a search engine. Data was first collected on August 26th, 2020 (Supplementary Material S1). We employed the following search string to gather relevant literature: (restor* or recreat* or rehabilitat* or reforest* or afforest* or recover* or regenerat* or remediat* or revege*) AND (forest*) AND (Brazil* or Brasil*) AND (biodiversity or diversity) (see Supplementary Material S1). The searching and screening procedures closely resemble those employed by Romanelli et al. (2022).
Only primary research meeting the following inclusion criteria was considered for full-text analysis. Eligible studies had to be conducted in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, with interventions classified as either active (e.g., tree planting or seeding) or passive (minimal human intervention in forest regeneration) restoration..., , # Assessing the recovery gap in forest restoration within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k6djh9wj4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k6djh9wj4)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data was collected through a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature to evaluate biodiversity outcomes in restored areas of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Studies were selected based on specific inclusion criteria, focusing on active and passive forest restoration efforts. The research analyzed quantitative biodiversity indicators, such as species richness, species abundance, and vegetation structure, comparing restored sites to reference forests. Data extraction and processing involved using metaDigitise for figure-based data retrieval and Revtools for duplicate removal. Missing data represented as N/A.

### Files and variables

#### File: Data\_Abundance.csv

**Description:** Data collected for species abundance

##### Variables

* ID: Article ID
* Authors
* ...,