To investigate effects of warming on soil nutrients, microbes and soil enzyme activities in alpine meadow and alpine swamp meadow in the hinterland of the Qinghai-ibet Plateau of China, an experiment was carried out from August 2006 to September 2008 using open-top chambers and capped chambers for comparison.Results show that (1) in alpine swamp meadow, warming increased the average air temperature by 2.4 ℃, and the soil temperature within the depth of 5 cm by 0.8℃ in the open-op chambers and by 4.9℃ and by 14.℃, respectively, in the closed chambers; while in alpine meadow, it increased soil temperature by 0.1℃ and by 3.3℃ in the open-op chambers and closed chambers, respectively.(2) soil nutrients in the two meadows responded differently to warming.In the alpine swamp meadow, soil organic carbon and total nitrogen decreased in the soil layer 0~5 cm in depth, but increased in the soil layer 5~20 cm in depth in both chambers, while in the alpine meadow, they increased in the soil layer 0.cm in depth, but decreased in the soil layer 5~20 cm in depth.(3) warming significantly increased carbon and nitrogen contents in soil microbial biomass, but the greater magnitude of the temperature rise in the closed chambers suppressed metabolism of soil microbes, thus leading to decrease in carbon and nitrogen contents in microbial biomass.(4) The activities of catalase, urease and proteinase increased to a various extent in two meadow soils, but the activity of alkaline phosphatase decreased, and saccharase responded differently between the two meadow soils.The increase in activities of catalase, urease and proteinase and the decrease in saccharase and alkaline phosphatase in the closed chambers were less in magnitude than in the open-op chamber, which is similar to the variation trend of the population of soil microbes.The different responses of soil organic carbon and total N to warming is attributed to difference between the two meadows in soil properties, hydrothermal regime, soil metabolism, vegetation, soil fauna (animal and microbe), population and micro-iodiversity.