Use of Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) to Monitor Vegetation Recovery on Linear Disturbances

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comment - The authors evaluated the use of Mobile laser scanning in quantifying the vegetation structure metrics across the linear disturbance areas in boreal forest. Their major take was that while MLS eases the quantification of vegetation structure than conventional field measured techniques but the accuracies of the derived vegetation metrics from MLS are highly dependent on the vegetation structure and time of scanning. Overall, the paper is well written. Some minor comments are listed below-

L47-48 - can add here the advantage of remote sensing in characterizing complex vegetation metrics which can't be quantified by field measured techniques.

L56 - forest stand features

L61-62 - One more disadvantage of ALS is the inability to carry repeat measurements due to cost and maintaining same flightlines

L79 -80- Since previous paragraph ended by listing the strengths of MLS, start this paragraph with the use of MLS in forest remote sensing. cite some studies that have used MLS. 

Methods - please list the resulting point densities after noise removal.

Also, you can add a figure with MLS walking path overlaid on the canopy height model of one of the linear disturbance.

Add height scale bar to Fig 3 A, C & E

Author Response

Please see attached document

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript describes the application of mobile LiDAR scanner (MLS) in seismic lines in the forest cleared through forests for oil and gas exploration. Authors aimed to better understand the conditions for use of MLS on seismic lines by testing this technology in different seasons and across a range of forest densities. The study is relevant for the field and for the reader of the special issue. The manuscript has interesting results which potentially can be reproducible after improvement of the manuscript writing.

Specific comments are:

Line 63: “..ALS associated with..low point cloud densities” - Present ALS have high point cloud densities. Also, point cloud densities cannot be main factor to extract precisely tree parameters. Processing algorithms are no less important.

Line 65: TLS abbreviation is terrestrial laser scanner, it is true in the manuscript?

Line 97: Objectives of the study are common. It I recommended to reformulate them in more scientifically sound sentences, for example: To test or to explore the accuracy of H, DBH, density measured with MLS.

Line 98: What is a threshold for “accurate measure?”

Line 98: do you mean tree density or point cloud density?

Line 100: The objective should be more specific: impacted by leaf-on, leaf-off conditions, forest density..

Line 104: Canada?

Line 121: This part needs to be improved. What field equipment do you use to measure tree inventory?

Line 124: Which one aerial imagery? What were the airborne data acquisition parameters and how (which method) did you assign 3 predicted recovery categories.

Line 136: It is recommended to add a figure illustrated Hovermap positions to clarify more the data collecting method.

Line 151-198: Flowchart or some Scheme with data processing steps could help to read the text about data processing.

Line 236: Figure 3. A, C, E. Could you please add the color scale of height, or what exactly do you want to say using these colors?

Line 252: Table 1. What is sph? Please, include the explanation of the abbreviation.

Line 327: I am afraid that ground reference measurements of height are not precise in such forest and subjective. (see for example the study of Luka Jurjević et al. 2020 Is field-measured tree height as reliable as believed). MLS method probably more precise, and there is a question if there is a need to have reference tree height. You could mentioned about the concerns in the Discussion section.

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank to Authors for answering and clarifying the study presentation.