Vegetation assessments (conditioning and responding phase).
During the second half of May 2017 (conditioning phase), and again in August 2018 (responding phase), vegetation assessments were performed in each subplot. In each plot, the percentage of vegetation cover was estimated visually for each plant species within a 50 x 100 cm frame. In addition, the percentage moss cover and bare ground were recorded. The frame was placed approximately in the middle of the plot in order to exclude potential edge effects. The cover of the different functional types (i.e., grasses, non-leguminous forbs) was calculated as the cumulative cover of each species belonging to the respective functional type.