Plant community data and site environmental variables for "The large-scale restoration of fire and water regimes in Everglades National Park reveal little change in plant diversity along an elevational gradient."

Quantifying the response of plant diversity to large-scale restoration is essential for measuring management success. One of the world’s largest restoration efforts began in 2000 in the Everglades ecosystem in Florida, USA through the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). In coordination with ongoing fire management, this restoration effort aims to restore natural hydrologic and fire regimes in this dynamic ecosystem. Restored water and fire regimes in the Everglades interact along an elevational gradient between seasonally inundated marl prairie and frequently burned pine rockland on Long Pine Key (LPK) in Everglades National Park (ENP). To determine the effects of management on plant community richness and composition, we resampled transects spanning the elevational gradient between marl prairie and pine rockland initially sampled prior to the implementation of current restoration efforts (c. 1997-1999). We measured percent plant cover and developed generalized linear mixed models to determine the effects of fire frequency, average water depth, and elevation on plant species richness and composition across the two time periods.