Plant communities are continually undergoing change, both through time and in response to external drivers. Here, I will present on two global synthesis projects which explore the dynamics of grass dominated ecosystems. First using a global change experiment database (CoRRE), I will establish how much change is typical from year to year in an unmanipulated system, and then I will relate background rates of yearly change to the responsiveness of a community to global change drivers. Second, using a grazing exclosure database (GEx), I will explore how plant community composition changes in response to grazing. Throughout this talk, we will take a wholistic approach to communities, using multivariate statistics and rank abundance curves to move beyond simple richness responses and instead account for identity and abundance of species. Plant communities are dynamic, and this talk aims to identify just how dynamic grassland communities are and what are the consequences of that dynamism.