Fig. 1

a Region of interest in the north of Scotland. b Map displaying the location of the burnt (red crosses) and long-unburnt plots (blue crosses) used as part of the study in relation to the wildfire footprints of the 2019 Flow Country wildfires which includes the Melvich (ME), Bighouse (BH), and Forsinard (FD) sites, the 2011 “Croft 1” wildfire (CR8) and the three ~ 20-year-old smaller wildfires making up the Shurrery (SH20) sites. c Schematic representations (not to scale) of quadrat distribution at each plot represented by a cross in (b). All plots included undrained (UN) and drained (DR) quadrats, but plots in BH and FD also included Hummock (HU) and Hollow (HO) quadrats. See dataset and metadata in Martin-Walker et al. (2022) for further details