Data to the paper “Extreme drought and long-term vegetation change: Seedling establishment as a bottleneck of grassland recovery”

In this paper, we monitored vegetation dynamics in permanent plots on a yearly basis in a temperate grassland in Central Hungary over 25 years (1999–2023) that included two extreme droughts. We examined (1) long-term changes in species and functional group dominance with a particular focus on the effects of droughts and the recovery following the drought of 2003, and (2) the role of seedling establishment (seedling emergence and first-summer survival) in the post-drought recovery of dominant perennial grasses. We also assessed whether extreme drought events causing mass mortality of perennial grasses in our study system have become more frequent over the past 123 years.Plant_cover_and_density_data.xlsx file contains the cover, density, and seedling density data of dominant species (Species data sheet) and the cover data of plant functional groups (Functional groups data sheet) that we collected during our study, as well as the explanation of the data (Data description sheet).Meteorological_data.xlsx file contains annual mean temperature, annual precipitation, and drought index data for the 25-year study period (1999–2023) (25 years data sheet), May–August temperature, precipitation, and drought index data for the past 123 years (1901–2023) (123 years data sheet), and the explanation of the data (Data description sheet).