Effects of Sediment Types on the Distribution and Diversity of Plant Communities in the Poyang Lake Wetlands
, Yizhen Liu 1,2,†, Ying Liu 3, Huicai Guo 4, Gang Chen 1, Zhuoting Fu 5, Yvying Fu 1 and Gang Ge 1,2,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
It seems to me that this research is more concentrated on the ecological impacts of different soil types than on the diversity of the plant communities. The research shows that the flooding in 2017 is influential on plant distributions in the winter of 2020-2021. But the authors never explain why this maybe. They mention that they used a range of hydrological parameters, but these parameters are never listed. Also, Figures 4 and 6 seems to indicate a lot of overlap in the plant communities of fluvial and fluvio-lacustrine facies. But the authors seem to completely ignore that.
It is my understanding that r-strategist or ruderal plant species have high sexual (seed) reproduction, which allows them to colonize newly created open spaces (Grime 1977). The authors say that most of these plants establish asexually. But they never discuss this fundamental change from Grime (1977). Which is not cited.
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper presents very interesting information on wetland vegetation in relation to sedimentation. The paper would greatly benefit from English editing and some minor changes in the organization of the method section.
line 54 - all lakes do not carry water?
line 63 - Could you add why this is crucial?
line 91 - flourish vegetation means that the wetland vegetation was in bloom, in flowering state?
line 99 - Drude scale add citation
lines 119-122 - This should go to Data analysis.
lines 127-1321 - You could start the paragraph stating that seven ecohydrological parameters were calculates and then describe how you got them.
Line 133 - for all Data analysis. - You could start each sentence with the corresponding objective of the analysis. Eg. We classified and identified the types of wetland plant communities using agglomerative hierarchical cluster with Ward´s criterion (reference)
Line 142-143 - Could you elaborate more on the chosen DCA parameters?
lines 165-168 - The following R packages were used: ...
line 227 - SD stands for standard deviations?
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
We are sincerely grateful for your comments, and please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript ID: diversity-1742236
Title: Effects of Sediment Types on the Distribution and Diversity of Plant Communities in the Poyang Lake Wetlands
The topic of the manuscript is important, since it is a study on diversity in wetlands. The climate changes and increasing demands for water represent a threat to the wetlands in littoral zones of freshwater lakes. The manuscript deals with influence of sediment types on the distribution and diversity of plant communities. For these reasons the manuscript fits well into the scope of the journal as well as the Special Issue. Before the final acceptance, the manuscript requires some improvements.
Some of the scientific names of plant species are not written in italics. Please check the entire text and correct. (e.g. Ln 267-8, 340)
Specific Comments:
Abstract
Ln 28: Please use either “vegetation” or “plant communities” and not vegetation communities. Here and in other cases throughout the text.
Introduction
Ln 34: I suggest to improve the terminology: In wetlands, such as littoral zones of the lakes or riparian wetlands along the rivers, sediment properties play the key role for the growth of plants and distribution of plant communities [1-3]. Sedimentation has multiple effects on the germination and distribution of plants ….
Ln 37: … physical and chemical characteristics
Ln 39: … where plants thrive [7].
Ln 46, 55, 61, 67: Omit And on the beginning of the sentence.
Ln 57: … alternation of water and land phase in Poyang Lake creates specific hydrological environment for wetland plants, forming ….
Ln 61, 67,…: I suggest to replace the term altitude with elevation, which is used later in the text.
Ln 67: beach wetlands … I suggest different terms: littoral (or supralittoral) wetlands
Materials and Methods
Ln 88: environmental conditions enabled the development of the species-rich wetland flora in ….
Ln 93: Do some transects have a range of 10.5 m and others up to 12.5 m? This is not clear.
Ln 99: Drude scale – please add reference or explain this scale.
Ln 119: (USDA) add reference
Figure 2. Please enlarge it to column width.
Results
Ln 170: The subtitle contains “beach areas” these words do not appear later in the text so I suggest to delete it from the subtitle.
Figure 2. Please enlarge it to improve the readability.
Ln 226-228: these facts and decision for the gradient analyses are usually explained in Methods. I suggest to move the description of the methods to the suitable chapter.
Ln 230-236: Please add the information obtained by forward selection on how much variance was explained by each of these three significant factors.
Figure 2. are all four figures really necessary? Pielou index does not show any significance between the groups. I would not display it, in fact I would show only Species Richness and Shannon index H. These two figures would be more readable if enlarged.
Discussion
Please add some references from other parts of the world like Europe and South America. Many articles on that topic have been published form these countries. This would integrate the discussion to more international context. At present more than half of the references were published exclusively by Chinese researchers.
There are 18 citation in the discussion and some more would enrich it.
Conclusion
Ln 336-39 : I suggest: Our results revealed that three sediment types in Poyang Lake Wetlands differ in their soil texture, which combined with flood duration, influenced the distribution of plants in the littoral zone. The distribution ….
Ln 341-2: I suggest sediments instead of facies
Author Response
We are sincerely grateful for your comments, and please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have addressed all my previous comments and the writing has been greatly improved.
