The potential relationships between community structure (e.g. plant density and species diversity) and community stability are of continual interest to both theorists and land managers. Confronted with many dimensions of global change, including climate change and the invasion of exotic species, restoration and management methods that maximize community stability are of particular interest. Despite this, very few studies have addressed the consequences of different restoration methods for the development and maintenance of restored communities, particularly when these communities are subject to an episodic disturbance, such as drought. Response to drought is especially relevant to restored grasslands in the Central Plains, where periodic droughts are expected to increase as a result of climate change. In 2006, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) established a series of experimental plots with replicate seeding diversity and seeding rate treatments at a site along the Platte River in Nebraska. This study utilizes those plots to compare the responses of grassland restored at different seeding rates and levels of diversity to a simulated drought. The central hypothesis is that different seeding or diversity treatments cause divergent community responses to and recovery from severe drought. To assess drought impacts on plant communities in the different restoration treatments I have erected rainout shelters that exclude 70-80% of natural precipitation and I will track changes in plant community composition and productivity over one growing season of drought (2009) and a recovery period of at least one growing season (2010) following the cessation of drought. Vegetation dynamics within the drought treatment will be compared with plant community composition and productivity in paired plots not subjected to drought. Here I present baseline, pre-drought patterns of aboveground community composition and belowground bud density for both sown native species and adventitious exotic species with respect to seeding rate and diversity treatments. I also present details on rainfall manipulation methods, future data collection, and predictions about treatment impacts on the development of restored grassland communities.