Analysis on the Fire Progression and Severity Variation of the Massive Forest Fire Occurred in Uljin, Korea, 2022
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript is a typical case study about a forest fire severity happened in the given area in South Korea. Basically the quality of the paper is nice and with some modification and addition it is acceptable.
The title of the paper covers the topic of the manuscript, the paper contains the main requirements of the scientific paper as well as abstract, introduction, purposes of the study, used methods, discussions and results. The objectives are well defined and well understood. The used methods are acceptable and helped the authors to gain the objectives. Sentinel 2 satellites are a commonly used tool to analyse forest fires and its severity. The parts of the manuscript is logically follows each other’s, it is easy to follow and well understandable. Results are grounded, discussion is also acceptable. Reference list is relevant and it is mostly in correct form.
Basically this manuscript is nice, however contains many mistake regarding the references in the main body text. In lines of 81, 118, 144, 149, 153, 160,168, 198, 209, 242, 247 there are no references, signed even with the authors after uploading the manuscript. Each of them requires a correct references!
I enjoyed to read it!
Author Response
Point 1: The title of the paper covers the topic of the manuscript, the paper contains the main requirements of the scientific paper as well as abstract, introduction, purposes of the study, used methods, discussions and results. The objectives are well defined and well understood. The used methods are acceptable and helped the authors to gain the objectives. Sentinel 2 satellites are a commonly used tool to analyse forest fires and its severity. The parts of the manuscript is logically follows each other’s, it is easy to follow and well understandable. Results are grounded, discussion is also acceptable. Reference list is relevant and it is mostly in correct form.
Response 1: We appreciate your valuable time and efforts for reviewing this manuscript.
Point 2: Basically this manuscript is nice, however contains many mistake regarding the references in the main body text. In lines of 81, 118, 144, 149, 153, 160,168, 198, 209, 242, 247 there are no references, signed even with the authors after uploading the manuscript. Each of them requires a correct references!
Response 2: The errors were actually caused by the journal desk when they compiled our DOC file to PDF, where they did not make sure if there were no errors. We informed the desk of this issue, and they promised that this would not happen in the next round of review. Thank you for your correction.
Reviewer 2 Report
1. Line 62-64: Which satellite data? Please mention to S-2 (SR=10 m and TR=5 days) and provide sufficient information on major issues for remote sensing communities. How about spectral resolution (e.g. red edge bands) ? Are they important in your research? S-2 has not consist of any thermal bands, Is it a limitation in your study?
2. Line 65-66: Revise your research questions (especially 1 and 2) and try to be more scientific.
3. I think the introduction could have given a more detailed description on the wildfire issue, such as the impact of wildfire on ecosystem services, and then a discussion on the existing literature on the topic (burned are mapping, etc). also in this section highlight the importance of such studies and your research innovations.
4. Line 81: Error! Reference source not found.
5. Section 2.1. Add the information of your study site/s (area, lat, long, elevation range, climatology and other nessacery information, also mention Figure 1 in this section.
6. Line 89: KFS?!! didn't define previously. Also double check other abbreviations.
7. Line 100: which interpolation method did you use and why? Also there is two SWIR bands!
8. Section 2.2. needs significant corrections. for example you mentions "The RGB bands (Band 2, Band 3, and Band 4) have 10-m resolution" how about Band 8?! or it is not mention which software did you use. I know you run all the process in SNAP but add this information in relevant section. or line 108-110 DEM data (revise this section and try to use a scientific language).
9. Line 119: Error! 119 Reference source not found.
10: Line 137: Plot size and sampling methods are missing.
11. Line 139: what kind of drone images did you use? Camera (spatial, spectral characteristics) also processing workflow to generate orthophotomosaics? The georefrensing error?? Did you use ground control points? if yes add the error tables, if not present the accuracy of drone's GPS and mention how you manage the geprefrencing error between drone images and Sentinel-2. Present this information in the relevant section. How many samples with in situ measurements and how many with drones? Why did you use both of them?
12. Lines: 144, 149, 153, 160, 168, ...: Error! Reference source not found.
13. Lines 162-164: Severity levels: need references.
14. in Figure 4, you used 17 samples for R2 estimation but in Table 1 you have 20 samples! Also I think, 20 sample is not sufficient for accuracy assessment and correlation analysis. Do you think with 20 samples we can investigate the capability of this methodology??
15. Line 195: Figure 1!! revise the caption.
16. Don't repeat the results in the discussion section. the discussion section required remarkable improvments. Discuss about your results (not repeat them) and compare your study with the existing litrature.
17. add more, high impact and new references in the whole the paper.
Author Response
We appreciate your valuable time and efforts for reviewing this manuscript.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
General comment:
In this paper, satellite images are used to analyze the large-scale forest fires in Uljin, South Korea. The spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of forest types are obtained, which is a relatively new analysis method, the development process of such large-scale fires can be seen intuitively. The difference of fire spreading speed in different stages was studied in detail. The difference normalized burn ratio (dNBR) was applied to map the burn area, and the dNBR was transformed into the actual composite combustion index (CBD) to build the relationship between them. This paper concludes that there are obvious differences in the severity of fires in different forest types, and the severity of coniferous forests is three times that of deciduous forests.
- Starting from the Section 2, there are multiple "Error! Reference source not found".
- In Figure 3, Are there any differences in the wind speed and humidity at the geographical locations of areas A, B and C in the figure?
- In Table 1, There are two groups of composite combustion index (CBI) of 0 in area C. Why?
- In Figure 5, The icons here are not in the right order, as is Figure 7.
- In Section 4.4, How to distinguish the abundance ratio of different tree species before fire and the pre burning ratio of different tree species before fire? The description in this paper is not detailed enough.
- In Conclusion, If the forest type is not considered, the fire intensity of coniferous forest is higher. However, the development of fire is not affected by the forest type, which means that the existence of different tree species will not affect the spread of fire, but the fire intensity will be different due to different combustion characteristics of different tree species?
Author Response
We appreciate your valuable time and efforts for reviewing this manuscript.
Point 1: Starting from the Section 2, there are multiple "Error! Reference source not found".
Response 1: The errors were actually caused by the journal desk when they compiled our DOC file into PDF, where they did not make sure if there were no errors. We informed the desk of this issue, and they promised that this would not happen in the next round of review. Thank you for your correction.
Point 2: In Figure 3, Are there any differences in the wind speed and humidity at the geographical locations of areas A, B and C in the figure?
Response 2: The meteorological data measured at the AWS (Automated Weather System) stations operated by the Korea Meteorological Administration showed that shows that the wind speed ranges 2.0 ~ 2.5m/s, and the humidity was 28% at all sites, exhibiting little difference on the date of visit.
Point 3: In Table 1, There are two groups of composite combustion index (CBI) of 0 in area C. Why?
Response 3: C01 and C02 showed no fire damage when investigated according to Firemon's on-site CBI measurement method. We intentionally collected plots with no burn scars (CBI=0), to secure sufficient CBI range for the regression.
Point 4: In Figure 5, The icons here are not in the right order, as is Figure 7.
Response 4: The order of the picture has been rearranged.
Point 5: In Section 4.4, How to distinguish the abundance ratio of different tree species before fire and the pre burning ratio of different tree species before fire? The description in this paper is not detailed enough.
Response 5: We have consulted the forest type map by KFS, and took the pre-fire ratio of conifers to deciduous as the abundance ratio since the forest type map does not change so rapidly without any events such as forest fire. We’re not sure if we understood your question correctly.
Point 6: In Conclusion, If the forest type is not considered, the fire intensity of coniferous forest is higher. However, the development of fire is not affected by the forest type, which means that the existence of different tree species will not affect the spread of fire, but the fire intensity will be different due to different combustion characteristics of different tree species?
Response 6: Thank you for your keen comment. Although the decisive conclusion cannot be made from the scope of this study, we think that the fire spread behaviors of different levels are the factors that determines the overall spread speed. In particular, the surface and the crown level fire spread is known to have clearly different behavior for conifers and deciduous, which was also consistent with our field observation. We agree that the discussion on the point was not sufficient in our previous manuscript, so we have added a new paragraph explaining the point in Discussion section as follows. [Line 315 – 332]
“Other studies conducted for Korean forests also testifies that crown fires in conifers usually induces higher heat transfer than surface fire, accompanied with higher heat column [40-42]. Dense coniferous forest usually has high fire risk particularly when the variation in topography is high, affected by the strong heat transfer and fire brand that spread intense fire rapidly to the surrounding areas [40]. Our field survey data also confirms that the burn ratio of branches and leaves are significantly higher for conifers than the deciduous.
Insignificant difference in fire spread between conifers and deciduous despite the clear difference in crown fire behavior may be due to the compensation by the rapid surface fire spread in deciduous forests. Our site surveying shows that the sites in deciduous forest have more ground-level fuels (e.g. fallen dry leaves, and small branches) than the sites in coniferous forest in our study area. An independent experiment con-ducted for Korean forest fuels showed that surface fire spreads 1.5~2 times faster for a deciduous specie than a coniferous specie when wind is moderate to strong, support-ing our observation [43]. Difference in the charcoal height of the trunks between the two forest types is that coniferous forest had much higher charcoal height (1~10 m), while deciduous had it only up to 50 cm, exhibiting the crown fire is definitely not the major spread agent in deciduous forest.”
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is now in good shape and ready for publication
Congrats
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper has improved a lot, it can be published now.
