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.