Can restoration based on incorporating harvested freshwater macrophytes into degraded soils increase ground coverage, floristic richness, and diversity within a year at a site in southern Brazil?

This large‐scale field study evaluates emerging vegetation 1 year after incorporating 374 m 3 of macrophyte biomass into the soil in a degraded area in Southern Brazil. We tested whether treatments using this technique led to (1) higher floristic richness and diversity and (2) higher coverage and dominance by species different from areas without macrophyte soil incorporation, identifying the species that characterize the initial recovery process. The restoration treatments utilizing macrophytes led to significant increases in species richness and diversity as identified in the structural analysis, reaching almost twice the number of plant species in adjacent areas degraded for longer and with no intervention. The absolute cover increased by 50 and 76% for the doses of 50 and 100 m 3 /ha, respectively, compared to the treatment without macrophyte incorporation, achieving similar values to an adjacent degraded area with no recent degradation, surpassing 100%. The structurally most important species Dichanthelium sabulorum , Calopogonium mucunoides , Baccharis dracunculifolia , Paspalum exaltatum , and Cyperus lanceolatus also presented frequencies higher than 90% in all treatments, underscoring their predominant characteristics as colonizers of degraded areas and similar ones with potential to test for replication in restoration projects in the region. Among these species, we intentionally sowed only C. mucunoides , while the others demonstrate natural colonization through propagules in the region or from the phytomass of the incorporated macrophytes. This approach provides a distinct advantage over other treatments by improving our understanding of the potential of different types of colonizers at the site during initial restoration.