Post‐fire peatland recovery by peat moss inoculation depends on water table depth

Peatland restoration is essential to preserve biodiversity and carbon stored in peat soils. Common techniques such as rewetting do not always result the full recovery of peatland taxonomic functional properties, threatening resilience restored peatlands their stores. Here, we study use moss inoculation stimulating short-term a wildfire-impacted using mesocosms at high low water table depth, representing ideal adverse hydrological conditions respectively. Inoculation conjunction with tables accelerated vascular plant prokaryote communities. Importantly, Sphagnum—the keystone genus these peatlands—only established inoculated mesocosms. Together, this resulted an increased CO2 uptake by approximately 17 g m−2 day−1 reduced overall nutrient content pore water. Synthesis applications. Our results indicate that can be used accelerate establishment peatland-specific species. In addition, they suggest potential combine back into system post-fire. This offers basis for future work exploring long-term return disturbed pre-degraded state, wider application soil mechanism recovery.