Nonintrusive Field Experiments Show Different Plant Responses to Warming and Drought Among Sites, Seasons, and Species in a North–

We used a novel, nonintrusive experimental system to examine plant responses to warming and drought across a climatic and geographical latitudi-nal gradient of shrubland ecosystems in four sites from northern to southern Europe (UK, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Spain). In the first two years of experimentation reported here, we measured plant cover and biomass by the pinpoint method, plant 14C uptake, stem and shoot growth, flower-ing, leaf chemical concentration, litterfall, and her-bivory damage in the dominant plant species of each site. The two years of approximately 1°C ex-perimental warming induced a 15 % increase in total aboveground plant biomass growth in the U