Bet Hedging to Aid Seed-Based Wetland Restoration Under Hydrologic Extremes.

Reestablishing native plant communities following invasive species management is a common restoration goal for wetland managers. Although passive recolonization is occasionally sufficient, often, active revegetation through seeding is required. However, the outcomes of seeding likely differ by site (due to varying environmental conditions) and the composition of the seed mix. We evaluated the effects of both passive recolonization and seeding treatments (varying density and diversity of natives) on wetland plant community cover and composition at two sites in the Great Salt Lake Watershed, USA, over two years. We found that passive recolonization was insufficient to increase native plant cover at one location and limit invasive species' cover at either location. Furthermore, different emergent wetland restoration sites, despite geographic proximity, had different plant community outcomes, likely due to distinct site environmental conditions. We also found that the effects of the seeding treatments appeared to be overwhelmed by water depth due to two extreme weather events (severe drought in year 1 and prolonged flooding in year 2). However, these events provided an opportunity to observe the recovery potential of the different functional groups and identify three species of restoration interest ( Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13157-025-01935-7.