DOI: 10.5061/dryad.g4f4qrfnz
title: Grazing and climate change have site-dependent interactive effects on vegetation in Asian montane rangelands

description: 1. Climate over Asian montane rangelands is changing faster than the
 global average, posing serious threats to the future of the region’s
 livestock-based economies and cultures. Effects of climate change on
 rangeland vegetation likely depend on grazing by herbivores but the
 potential responses of vegetation to such changes in climate and grazing
 regimes remains unclear. 2. We examined vegetation responses to
 experimentally simulated climate change (warming, drought and increased
 rainfall) and grazing (clipping vegetation) between 2015-2018 at two
 mountain rangeland sites: Spiti valley, in the Indian Trans-Himalaya and
 Tost, in the Gobi-Altai Mountains in Mongolia. 3. Clipping and climate
 change manipulations interactively reduced vegetation cover and biomass
 but did not affect species richness. Treatment effects and their
 interactions varied between sites. In ungrazed plots, vegetation cover and
 biomass declined sharply in response to warming (18-35%) and drought
 (20-50%) at the two sites, and, surprisingly also declined slightly in
 response to increased rainfall (20%) at Tost. While the effects of climate
 treatments were largely similar in the grazed and ungrazed plots in Tost,
 they were larger in the ungrazed plots in Spiti. The decline in vegetation
 cover was driven by a decline in the cover of both forbs and grasses. 4.
 In combination, grazing and warming (Tost) or drought (Spiti) had
 sub-additive effects, i.e., the decrease in vegetation cover in response
 to grazing and warming/drought was less than the sum of their independent
 effects but greater than the effect of either manipulation alone. Of the
 two, warming had a greater effect than drought at the more arid site
 (Tost), while drought had a larger effect at the more mesic site
 (Spiti). Synthesis and applications. Our findings show that
 future changes in climate, including just over 1oC of warming, could
 undermine the sustainability of pastoral economies and the persistence of
 wildlife across Asian montane rangelands. Further, grazing by herbivores
 will play an important role in mediating rangeland responses to climate
 change; thus, pasture management in concert with local pastoralists will
 be crucial in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change on
 rangelands, pastoral livelihoods and wildlife populations.
description: This dataset consists of data used in the analysis presented in
 'Grazing and climate change have site-dependent effects on vegetation
 in Asian montane rangelands' by Kohli et al. (2020).
 Plant cover data were collected at peak biomass annually for
 three years (2015-2017 August in Spiti, 2016-2018 July in Mongolia) from
 permanent 1m<sup>2 </sup>quadrats located within each plot.
 Data were aggregated by plant functional types (Sedges, Grasses,
 Leguminous forbs, Non-leguminous forbs, or Shrubs). Species richness
 indicates the number of species recorded that were rooted in the permanent
 vegetation quadrats. Please the supplementary information with
 the manuscript for more details about the experiment. 
description: Please see the readme file before using the data files.