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 1^oC 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.

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 1m² 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. 

Please see the readme file before using the data files.