Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: Association Ordination and Sampling Year Differences

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

so big dataset is impressive. However, the organization of this paper hindered the judgement of the paper for its reliablity. major revision is needed for the publciation of this paper.

Major:

seven year succession is too short for a forests, especially for the study of plant species diversity and soil nutrient relations.

 Minor:

method do no describe in detail and quanitify the method matchness between two time survey. for example, the soil sampling point, and the specility of survey person in two times possibly give great influences on the soil data and plant diversity data.

How many soil samples were collected were not described.

what kind of plants were suveyed was not described in your paper. did you measure only DBH>2cm or ?

Advices:

At the momenent, I cannot judge the correctness your  data. However, 7 year-induced changes in soil is too big than expectation, the same is to plant diversity indice.

I would like encourage the author to change the structure of your paper. For example, to study the main tree species dominance changes and their relation to soils. 

Author Response

Comments 9: The paper is lacking line numbering, which make the detail review difficult.

Response:  Thanks for your valuable comments. Now we make the line numbering for the whole manuscript.

 

Comments 10: The paper is chaotic, which disrupts a reader to follow the idea of the study, and its consistence.

Response: Thanks. In the revised version, we re-arranged the structures of manuscript and paid attention to the language to make it read smoothly. 

 

Comments 11: The 2 scientific questions placed at the end of Introduction do not refer strictly to the paper title which suggests the investigation on soil development within the studied 7 years will be done. In fact, the second scientific questions are unclear, and it needs linguistic correction.

Response: We changed the paper title to made it concise (Line:1), and reworded the second hypothesis to be clearly related to the paper title, “How would soil nutrients change and determined the plant diversity?” (Line:131,132).

 

Comments 12: Section “Site Conditions”: “(latitude 19°36′19°41′ north latitude 110°58′-111°03′ north latitude)” -???

Response:  Done. (Line:138).

 

Comments 13: There is a mess regarding acronyms in the manuscript, e.g., why the acronym of SLA is given in Introduction when the parameter is not further used in a paper? What is PFT? The acronym for phosphorus (P) is given twice.

Response: we have removed the acronyms, SLA (Line:67) and PFT (Line:107) in the revised version.

 

 

Comments 14:  Methods are not sufficiently described; besides I have serious doubts if they were properly applied.

Response: Thanks, the reviewer. We have thoroughly revised the method section as mentioned by the reviewer 1. Hope we have clarified the methods of data collection and data analysis (Line:152-173)

 

Comments 15: In a section “Site condition” the Authors write about “Representative plot”, while in the next section they write about 9 plots covering 2500 m2 per a plot. In turn, from the section 5 “Significance for Conservation” a reader knows that the total area of the study was 25600 m2, which is not consistent with the previous information.

Response: Sorry for making a mistake in the plot area in section 5, it should be “over 70 species in 2500 m²”. Also, we have checked the plot number and plot area in the whole manuscript. (Line:404)

 

Comments 16: The section “Data collection” is not sufficient. In fact, the Authors describe here dendrometrical studies, which are not further presented in the paper. In turn, in this section they do not describe the methodology how they obtained the floristic records which were used for the study.

Response: Thanks, the good suggestions. In the revised we paid attention to the method of data collection and clearly described the dendrometrical studies as well as floristic records. (Line:152-173)

 

Comments 17: “3. Soil Data Collection”: Are these methods internationally used? Please insert the proper references. There are several statements, which are really awkward (e.g.,” Initially, 25 g of dirt was added”; “The soil was crushed to a depth of 2.00 mm”). In fact, the title of the section (“Soil Data Collection”) is not consistent with the previous (“Data collection”), because the latter constitutes the part of the former. A reader is informed that 4 soil profiles were investigated. Why were not they placed in each plot? What is the soil type in a study area? How many soil samples were investigated?

1. Response: We added the reference of soil data collection and analysis “Anderson, J. M.; Ingram, J. S. I. “Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility: A Handbook of Methods. A.B. International Aberystwyth, UK”.1989, 157(4), p-265. (Line:533). We also clarified the descriptions of soil collection and analysis, “Four soil profile with 20 cm depth were collected along the diagonal of each 50 × 50 m plot, and there were 36 soil samples from 9 plots in total.” (Line:186,187). The soil type is lateritic soil in the study area (Line:143). There were 36 soil samples from 9 plots in total (Line:187)

 

Comments 18: From Table 1 a reader can guess that in total 98 subplots were employed in the study? How did you obtain the number (such things should be clearly described in M&M)?

Response: Thanks for highlighting this point. In the method section we have mentioned that “Wilcoxon's rank test was used to examine the variations in species diversity, evenness, and soil nutrients from 9 random plots (50 × 50 m) in year 2012 and 2019”, thus in Table 1 number of samples should be nine (Line:270).

 

Comments 19: The Authors declare that Fig. 2 shows the results of the Monte Carlo Permutation Test, which is not true. In fact, the figure shows the ordination CCA diagram, but MC results were not presented in the paper. What package was used for the ordination analysis?

Response: Thank you very much for your positive comments. We removed (Line:291) and for CCA the package was used factominer & factoextra packages (Line:247).

 

Comments 20: Presentation of results is not clear. E.g.: “(box-and-whisker plot)”, ““ggplot2”, “stat”, and “agricole” packages in R)” – why were they placed here?

Response: Thanks for highlighting this mistake, we replaced this line in data analysis section. (Line:246,247)

 

Comments 21: I could not find anywhere Table S1 and S2, which are mentioned in Results.

Response: Table S1 and Table S2 mentioned in the results and this is supplementary file uploaded. (Line:262,265)

 

Comments 22: Figures and Tables should be revisited to be clearer for a reader (e.g., what are “rows” in fig. 2?).

Response: Thank you very much for your valuable and useful comment. Rows showing the sites (Figure 2).

 

Comments 23: General photos of a studied plots should be shown to give a reader a general concept how the study area looks like.

Response: We would provide two photos showing plot samples.

      

Comments 24: Style is poor, e.g.: Starting a sentence like „ [36] demonstrated that…” is not acceptable.

Response: Done. (Line:104,311)

 

Comments 25: Many sentences need linguistic correction.

Response: Done.

 

Thank you for your precious time in reviewing our manuscript. 

Sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Long Wenxing (Corresponding author)

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper deals with the changes in vegetation and in soils, ongoing with the course of secondary plant succession in tropical forests located in Hainan Island (S China). The idea to investigate the changes is, of course, interesting, and the study, if it would be properly designed and described, could deliver really valuable scientific results. Unfortunately, at a present form, the paper does not meet the criteria enabling its publication in a leading international journal, which results i.a. from several drawbacks regarding the study design, and methodological issues. Consequently, in my opinion, the study should be sent back to the Authors for substantial revision or rejected.

The paper is lacking line numbering, which make the detail review difficult. Thus, below I refer to paper sections, if necessary.

1. The paper is chaotic, which disrupts a reader to follow the idea of the study, and its consistence. Some examples:

• The 2 scientific questions placed at the end of Introduction do not refer strictly to the paper title which suggests the investigation on soil development within the studied 7 years will be done. In fact, the second scientific questions is unclear, and it needs linguistic correction.
• Section “Site Conditions”: “(latitude 19°36′19°41′ north latitude 110°58′-111°03′ north latitude)” - ???
• There is a mess regarding acronyms in the manuscript, e.g. why the acronym of SLA is given in Introduction when the parameter is not further used in a paper? What is PFT? The acronym for phosphorus (P) is given twice.

2. Methods are not sufficiently described, besides I have serious doubts if they were properly applied. Several examples:

• In a section “Site condition” the Authors write about “Representative plot”, while in the next section they write about 9 plots covering 2500 m2 per a plot. In turn, from the section 5 “Significance for Conservation” a reader knows that the total area of the study was 25600 m2, which is not consistent with the previous information.
• The section “Data collection” is not sufficient. In fact, the Authors describe here dendrometrical studies, which are not further presented in the paper. In turn, in this section they do not describe the methodology how they obtained the floristic records which were used for the study.
• “3. Soil Data Collection”: Are these methods internationally used? Please insert the proper references. There are several statements, which are really awkward (e.g. ”Initially, 25 g of dirt was added”; “The soil was crushed to a depth of 2.00 mm”). In fact, the title of the section (“Soil Data Collection”) is not consistent with the previous (“Data collection”), because the latter constitutes the part of the former. A reader is informed that 4 soil profiles were investigated. Why were not they placed in each plot? What is the soil type in a study area? How many soil samples were investigated?
• From Table 1 a reader can guess that in total 98 subplots were employed in the study? How did you obtain the number (such things should be clearly described in M&M)?
• The Authors declare that Fig. 2 shows the results of the Monte Carlo Permutation Test, which is not true. In fact, the figure show the ordination CCA diagram, but MC results were not presented in the paper. What package was used for the ordination analysis?

3. Presentation of results is not clear. E.g.:

• “(box-and-whisker plot)”, ““ggplot2”, “stat”, and “agricole” packages in R)” – why were they placed here?
• I could not find anywhere Table S1 and S2, which are mentioned in Results.
• Figures and Tables should be revisited to be more clear for a reader (e.g. what are “rows” in fig. 2?).
• General photos of a studied plots should be shown to give a reader a general concept how the study area looks like.

4. Style is poor, e.g.:

• Starting a sentence like „[36] demonstrated that…” is not acceptable.
• Many sentences need linguistic correction.

Author Response

Comment 2: so big dataset is impressive. However, the organization of this paper hindered the judgement of the paper for its reliability. major revision is needed for the publication of this paper.

Response: Thanks for your encouraging compliments and giving us valuable suggestions. We have carefully made revisions according to the reviewers’ comments.

 

Comment 3: seven-year succession is too short for a forest, especially for the study of plant species diversity and soil nutrient relations.

Response: Thanks for highlighting this important point. As per the suggestion of reviewer 1, it will be a good study forest community succession spanning more than 7 years. But we found the plant diversity and soil conditions changed after 7 years succession in the tropical evergreen monsoonal forest. So, this study tells people the pattern of relationship between plant diversity and soil conditions during these seven years.  We will go on collecting data of this forest succession, and will report the progress.

 

Comment 4: method do no describe in detail and quantify the method matchness between two-time survey. for example, the soil sampling point, and the specialty of survey person in two times possibly give great influences on the soil data and plant diversity data.

Response: Thanks for raising this point. We have added some information about data collection method, and addressed the soil sampling point and the specialty of survey person in two times, The two investigations were carried out by the same research group and kept a consistent method…. Four soil profiles were randomly selected along the diagonal of each 50 × 50 m, and samples were taken from each plot …added the soil sampling point according to your suggestion (Line:184-191).

 

Comment 5: How many soil samples were collected were not described.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have addressed it in our revised version, four soil profiles were randomly selected along the diagonal of each 50 × 50 m, and there were 36 soil samples from 9 plots (Line:187).

 

Comment 6: what kind of plants were surveyed was not described in your paper. did you measure only DBH>2cm or?

Response: In the revised manuscript we describe the method of plant diversity collection in details, Woody plants with diameter at breast height (i.e., 1.3 m of the stem from the ground) ≥ 1 cm were identified, tagged, and mapped. The DBH information of the sampled trees was collected using a measuring tape and tree height was measured using a laser rangefinder (Line:161,168).

 

Comment 7: At the moment, I cannot judge the correctness your data. However, 7 year-induced changes in soil are too big than expectation, the same is to plant diversity indices.

Response: Thanks for the advice. We did observe the changes in the community structure and soil conditions of this tropical evergreen monsoonal forest in TNNR, as we showed in our manuscript. Since the plot establishments and data collection were done by the same research group in 2012 and 2019, we are confident that our manuscript gets the patterns of plant diversity and soil conditions during the 7 years.

 

Comment 8: I would like encourage the author to change the structure of your paper. For example, to study the main tree species dominance changes and their relation to soils. 

Response: Thanks for advice. We described the tree species dominance changes in the section “3.2. Patterns of Species Diversity” (Line:258), and assessed the correlation of dominant species and soil conditions in the section “3.4. Effects of Soil Nutrients on Dominant (Based on their abundance) Species” (Line:290).

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript deals with the vegetation changes, main soil properties changes and the relationships between vegetation and soil properties along 7 years of forest succession. Considering the need to understand what happens during the succession, this work can provide a modest but interesting contribution to our knowledge. Overall, I believe that the MS in its current format is not appropriate for publication and a very deep revision is requested. I provided only general feedback as below

The English grammar requires substantial revision throughout the text

The introduction section sounds like a series of information from the literature put together without to follow a clear framework and that allows to define the aims

Data collection section should be rewritten with a more appropriate scientific language

Data analysis section: explain which information can be gathered from the calculated indexes

Figure 1: explain that such values refer to 0-20 cm soil depth. Explain the meaning of the letters above the bars. Explain the meaning of the error bars. Phosphorus rather than phosphorous. In the figures you did not write any abbreviaion, therefore the explanation of the abbreviations is not necessary

Figure 2: TP, TN and OM abbreviations must be explained

Discussion section lacks focusing on key questions raised by the authors. It also has a narrative tone with limited mechanistic explanations related to findings

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you very much for sending us the valuable suggestions and constructive comments on the manuscript “forests-1518846” entitled “Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences”. Those comments were valuable and helpful for revising and improving the manuscript, as well as significantly important to our future research. We revised the manuscript carefully using the function of “Track changes” with green color and based on journal guidelines and have addressed the concerns of the Editors and reviewers point by point. We are confident that the product is a greatly improved paper that will capture increased readership. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions concerning our manuscript. 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment 1

The manuscript deals with the vegetation changes, main soil properties changes and the relationships between vegetation and soil properties along 7 years of forest succession. Considering the need to understand what happens during the succession, this work can provide a modest but interesting contribution to our knowledge. Overall, I believe that the MS in its current format is not appropriate for publication and a very deep revision is requested. I provided only general feedback as below

Response: Thanks for your advice reviewer. We removed the succession idea from whole paper and it has been changed into “Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences” also as per your suggestion (L. 2-4)

Comment 2

The English grammar requires substantial revision throughout the text

Response: Thanks to the reviewer for highlighting the important thing. we revised the English grammar throughout the text

Comment 3

The introduction section sounds like a series of information from the literature put together without to follow a clear framework and that allows to define the aims

Response: Thanks, we almost revised the introduction chapter (L. 53-154) and discussed according to our objectives.

Comment 4

Data collection section should be rewritten with a more appropriate scientific language

Response: Thanks to reviewer for raising this point. We have rectified data collection section (172-195).

Comment 5

Data analysis section: explain which information can be collected from the calculated indexes

Response: Thanks to reviewer. We used these three indices Shannon, Simpson and Pielou’s evenness in data analysis (L. 245-277) Simpson’s gathered information about diversity, the relative abundance of each species. Shannon collected the information diversity of species in Tongguling forest community. Pielou’s evenness index gathered the information that how close in numbers each species in our study area between two different sampling years (2012 & 2019)

Comment 6

Figure 1: explain that such values refer to 0-20 cm soil depth. Explain the meaning of the letters above the bars. Explain the meaning of the error bars. Phosphorus rather than phosphorous. In the figures you did not write any abbreviation, therefore the explanation of the abbreviations is not necessary

Response: Thank u so much to the reviewer. We removed 0-20 cm soil depth and correct that sentence (L. 209). Bars show standard error and different letters show a significant difference between 2 years (Fig. 1) (L. 291).

Comment 7

Figure 2: TP, TN, and OM abbreviations must be explained

Response: abbreviation explained (L. 354,355).

Comments 8

Discussion section lacks focusing on key questions raised by the authors. It also has a narrative tone with limited mechanistic explanations related to findings.

Response: We are grateful to the reviewer for highlighting the important section mistakes, we modified our discussion section and tried our level best to rectify the mistakes and removed the unnecessary lines (L. 361-536).

Corresponding author

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

9 year is very short for forest succession, and only 9 plots is also very small dataset. If want to be published, I strongly suggested make revision and decrease the strongthen of the conclusion on succession. As an instead, just make a simple discription of two year differences, and also complex association between species diversity and soil properties.  1)Please add a new ordintaion figure by including 2 year's data together, with year 2012 and 2019 as a factor in the ordination analysis. I can promise that the complex asscoation can be affected by the succession year slightly.  2)Changes in Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients along 7 Years’ 2 Community Succession in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest, please changed it to Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences 3)Fig. 1 is not box plot. Please use true box plot, and also add a new clomunn of pooled two year data.  whole text please delete the succession idea to identification of plant diversity and soil nutritent association is very important. However, large compaighn usually need very long time period for several years. this paper try to find different sampling year differences in plant diversity and soil nutrients, as well as their association. It should be a major revision, but will let this ms science-basis sound.  

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you very much for sending us the valuable suggestions and constructive comments on the manuscript “forests-1518846” entitled “Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences”. Those comments were valuable and helpful for revising and improving the manuscript, as well as significantly important to our future research. We revised the manuscript carefully using the function of “Track changes” with green color and based on journal guidelines and have addressed the concerns of the Editors and reviewers point by point. We are confident that the product is a greatly improved paper that will capture increased readership. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions concerning our manuscript. 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment 1

9 year is very short for forest succession, and only 9 plots is also very small dataset. If want to be published, I strongly suggested make revision and decrease the strengthen of the conclusion on succession. As an instead, just make a simple description of two-year differences, and also complex association between species diversity and soil properties.  1) Please add a new ordination figure by including 2 year's data together, with year 2012 and 2019 as a factor in the ordination analysis. I can promise that the complex association can be affected by the succession year slightly.  2) Changes in Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients along 7 Years’ 2 Community Succession in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest, please changed it to Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences 3) Fig. 1 is not box plot. Please use true box plot, and also add a new column of pooled two-year data.  whole text please delete the succession idea to identification of plant diversity and soil nutrient association is very important. However, large campaign usually needs very long time period for several years. this paper tries to find different sampling year differences in plant diversity and soil nutrients, as well as their association. It should be a major revision, but will let this MS science-basis sound.

Response: Thanks, the reviewer’s comments. We have carefully read all the comments put forward by referee, and thorough revised our manuscript and each question with cover letter. We think that our work has been improved, and hope it will satisfy the reviewer. 1. We selected 9 large plots of 50 × 50 (2500 m²) and divided into 64 20 × 20 m (400m²) plots by the community size (L.180,181). We removed the succession idea from conclusion (L. 538-547) as well as in whole paper. 2. We added the ordination figure by including 2 year’s soil data together (L. 357). 3. Thanks for raising this point, we revised the manuscript title as per your suggestion (L. 2-4). 4. We rectified the name mistake in Fig. 1, that is actually bar plot (L. 291), Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have addressed the two years differences in plant diversity and soil nutrients and their association in our revised version.

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate the Authors corrected the paper regarding some issues; however, unfortunately I cannot recommend publishing the article in Forests. In my opinion, the obtained results could potentially be interesting and thus worth publishing, but the manuscript still does not meet the criteria of a paper in a leading scientific journal.   

Some examples of my reservations:

1. Some descriptions of results in the text are not consistent with the results shown in tables/figures, e.g.:

- Statements written in l. 196-201 are not true. They are not consistent with Table S2. In fact in most presented models in this table all soil variables are no significantly important….

- The description of species placed in l. 204-210 is evidently not consistent with the content of Figure 2.

2. Figure 2 is still not fully clear for a reader. Besides, I can perceive here an important methodological flaw: if the Authors declare in their response that “rows” are sites in this figure, why the “rows” are not 9 in each graph as described in M&M?
3. There are still several unprofessional phrases in the paper, as e.g. “Initially, 25 g of dirt was added” (l. 127).
4. The Authors declare in their response, inserting two photos showing the studied plots, however it was not done.
5. There is still mess in presenting some results. E.g. tables in a supplementary file are wrongly numbered.
6. Coordinates given in l. 91 cover in some part the sea, and they are not fully consistent with the study site area given in l. 92.
7. The paper still needs linguistic correction. For example, there are mistakes in such important manuscript parts as scientific questions (l. 83 – “specie”; “ow”).

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you very much for sending us the valuable suggestions and constructive comments on the manuscript “forests-1518846” entitled “Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences”. Those comments were valuable and helpful for revising and improving the manuscript, as well as significantly important to our future research. We revised the manuscript carefully using the function of “Track changes” with green color and based on journal guidelines and have addressed the concerns of the Editors and reviewers point by point. We are confident that the product is a greatly improved paper that will capture increased readership. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions concerning our manuscript. 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment 1

I appreciate the Authors corrected the paper regarding some issues; however, unfortunately I cannot recommend publishing the article in Forests. In my opinion, the obtained results could potentially be interesting and thus worth publishing, but the manuscript still does not meet the criteria of a paper in a leading scientific journal.   

Response: Thanks to reviewer for highlighting our mistakes, we tried our level best to rectified our mistakes in whole manuscript. Hope it will satisfy to you.

Some examples of my reservations:

Comment 2

Some descriptions of results in the text are not consistent with the results shown in tables/figures, e.g.:

Statements written in l. 196-201 are not true. They are not consistent with Table S2. In fact, in most presented models in this table all soil variables are no significantly important….

Response: Thanks for your valuable comments. You are right, that most of the soil variables are not significantly important in the year of 2012 but some variables are significantly important in the 2019. We revised the table numbers in our revised manuscript (L. 298,517) as well as in supplementary file there are three tables, table S1, Table S2 and Table S3.

Comment 3

The description of species placed in l. 204-210 is evidently not consistent with the content of Figure 2.

Figure 2 is still not fully clear for a reader. Besides, I can perceive here an important methodological flaw: if the Authors declare in their response that “rows” are sites in this figure, why the “rows” are not 9 in each graph as described in M&M?

 

Response: Thanks to reviewer for highlighting this point.  We mentioned species full names in supplementary file (L. 331-346) and 9 large plots were divided into 64 20×20 m² subplots for analysis. The data was taken from 64 plots (L. 180,181). We modified the Fig.2 and removed the word “rows” and changed into plot numbers. In the diagram we just set the x and y axis limits to make varieties names more visible.

 

Comment 4

 

There are still several unprofessional phrases in the paper, as e.g. “Initially, 25 g of dirt was added” (l. 127).

 

Response: Thanks for raising this point. We removed the unprofessional phrases in whole paper, especially which you highlighted (L. 225,230).

 

Comment 5

The Authors declare in their response, inserting two photos showing the studied plots, however it was not done.

 

Response: Thanks, the reviewer. Sorry, we updated the manuscript to show the pictures of our studied plots (that are displayed in the response letter file during the last round of revision, but they cannot be directly posted on the online response systems) on round1 major revision, but we inserted these two pictures of our studied plots in revised version of round2 under the graphical abstract (L. 50).

 

Comment 6

There is still mess in presenting some results. E.g., tables in a supplementary file are wrongly numbered.

 

Response: Thanks for raising this point, now we rectified this mistake in our revised version and supplementary file. Table S1, Table S2 and Table S3.

Comment 7

Coordinates given in l. 91 cover in some part the sea, and they are not fully consistent with the study site area given in l. 92.

 

Response: We are thankful to the reviewer for his valuable comments. TNNR covers both marine and terrestrial areas with forests, coral reefs, marine abrasion landforms, and the related organisms being the conservation objects. Moreover, we mentioned the weblink. https://mapcarta.com/W317092421.

 

Comment 8

The paper still needs linguistic correction. For example, there are mistakes in such important manuscript parts as scientific questions (l. 83 – “specie”; “ow”).

 

Response: Thanks for your advice. We rectified the linguistic issues in the whole manuscript as well as in our scientific questions (L. 146-150).

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript need a further revision before publication.

Title: what do you ean for "association ordination"?

The abstract is quite confusing and must be rewritten

L 29: remove "change"

Ls 37-38: remove this sentence

L 39: the abbreviations OM and TN should be explained

L 40: where there is this low P availability?

Ls 47-50: this part must be rewritten or deleted

L 52: what do you mean for soil richness? Maybe you intended soil nutrient concentrations

L 52: "exctractable phosphorus", in water or other solvents?

Ls 60-61: remove this sentence

L 71: what is TNNR? Write the full name and then the abbreviation

Ls 79-81: the aim n.1 is too general, maybe you could say how thay change in 7 years

L 114: which profile?

Ls 115-117: maybe you could write "Each soil sample was ground and sieved to 2 mm"

L 119: "For the measure of OM concentration, 0.5 g of....". Similar thing for the other analyses

Ls 159-161: unclear, rewrite

Figure 1: "total phosphorus" instead of "total phosphorous"

Figure 1 caption: maybe you could write "Bar plot showing soil pH values and organic matter, total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations in 2012 and 2019. Error bars are the standard errors or standard deviations?. Different letters indicate significant differences between the investigation years according to Wilcoxon’s rank test (P < 0.05)."

L 189: Delete "In 7 years"

Ls 201-218: this paragraph is not well organized and is hard to understand. Please, rewrite

Ls 201-202: remove this sentence

L 202: pH is not a nutrient! You could write: In 2012, pH and TP....

Compared to the latest version, the discussion section does not show substantial improvements. It still lacks about focusing on key questions raised by the authors. It still has a narrative tone with limited mechanistic explanations related to findings

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewer:

Thank you very much for sending us the valuable suggestions and constructive comments on the manuscript “forests-1518846” entitled “Plant Diversity and Soil Nutrients in a Tropical Coastal Secondary Forest: association ordination and sampling year differences”. Those comments were valuable and helpful for revising and improving the manuscript, as well as significantly important to our future research. We revised the manuscript carefully using the function of “Track changes” with purple color and based on journal guidelines and have addressed the concerns of the Editors and reviewer point by point. We are confident that the product is a greatly improved paper that will capture increased readership. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions concerning our manuscript. 

Round3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment 1

The manuscript needs further revision before publication.

Response: Thanks, the reviewer’s comments. We tried our level best to improve our manuscript.

Comment 2

Title: what do you mean by "association ordination"?

Response: we are grateful to reviewer’s to raising this point. Ordination is a set of analyses that aim to summarize and present multivariate data to display differences between samples graphically into fewer dimensions than the original data set. We also determined the association between diversity and soil nutrients. Moreover, this title was recommended as per suggestion by the reviewer 1 in the last revision stage.

Comment 3

The abstract is quite confusing and must be rewritten

Response: Thank you to reviewer to highlighting the abstract mistakes. We modified the abstract in the revised manuscript. Hope you will not face troubledness this time (16-30).

Comment 4

L 29: remove "change"

Response: we removed this word as per your recommendation (L. 65).

Comment 5

Ls 37-38: remove this sentence

Response: Thanks, we deleted this sentence (Ls. 80,81)

Comment 6

L 39: the abbreviations OM and TN should be explained

Response: Thanks, done (L. 82).

Comment 7

L40: where there is this low P availability?

Response: we mentioned the “tropical forests” (L. 83).

Comment 8

Ls 47-50: this part must be rewritten or deleted

Response: Thanks to reviewer for highlighting this important point. We rectified the mistakes in that para (Ls. 93-96).

Comment 9

L 52: what do you mean for soil richness? Maybe you intended soil nutrient concentrations

Response: Thanks for your valuable comment. We modified our mistake as per your suggestion (L. 98).

Comment 10

L 52: "extractable phosphorus", in water or other solvents?

Response: Sorry for our mistake now, we mentioned the “soil content of extractable phosphorus (L. 98).

Comment 11

Ls 60-61: remove this sentence

Response: Thank you for your advice. We removed that sentence (Ls. 105,106)

Comment 12

L 71: what is TNNR? Write the full name and then the abbreviation

Response: Sorry to reviewer and grateful for raising this point. Now we mentioned the full name of TNNR (L. 147)

Comment 13

Ls 79-81: the aim n.1 is too general, maybe you could say how they change in 7 years

Response: Thanks for your good advice. We changed that in 7 years (L. 156-158).

Comment 14

L 114: which profile?

Response: sorry for your trouble. Now we mentioned the “soil profile” (L. 218).

Comment 15

Ls 115-117: maybe you could write "Each soil sample was ground and sieved to 2 mm"

Response: Thanks to reviewer for giving us a valuable advice. We changed this sentence as per your recommendation (L. 222).

Comment 16

L 119: "For the measure of OM concentration, 0.5 g of....". Similar thing for the other analyses

Response: Thanks to the reviewer for raising the important thing. We modified this line in all soil analysis para’s (Ls. 226,233,237,246).

Comment 17

Ls 159-161: unclear, rewrite

Response: We apologize for mistake. We have rewritten this sentence (Ls. 273,274).

Comment 18

Figure 1: "total phosphorus" instead of "total phosphorous"

Response: Thanks, we rectified our spelling mistake. Now changed as per your suggestion (L. 308).

Comment 19

Figure 1 caption: maybe you could write "Bar plot showing soil pH values and organic matter, total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations in 2012 and 2019. Error bars are the standard errors or standard deviations? Different letters indicate significant differences between the investigation years according to Wilcoxon’s rank test (P < 0.05)."

Response: Thanks to reviewer to telling us about valuable comments. We modified the caption of Fig. 1 (Ls. 309-312).

Comment 20

L 189: Delete "In 7 years"

Response: Thanks, we deleted (L. 315).

Comment 21

Ls 201-218: this paragraph is not well organized and is hard to understand. Please, rewrite

Response: Thanks to reviewer to for precious suggestion to us. We have rewritten again in simple words and mentioned the specie names in supplementary file. (Ls. 337-339).

Comment 22

Ls 201-202: remove this sentence

Response: Thanks for your valuable comment. We removed that sentence. We totally modified this para in short words (L. 336-337).

Comment 23

L 202: pH is not a nutrient! You could write: In 2012, pH and TP....

Response: Thanks to reviewer for prestigious comment to us. We changed this para in two lines in 3.2 simply. (L. 336-337).

Comment 24

Compared to the latest version, the discussion section does not show substantial improvements. It still lacks about focusing on key questions raised by the authors. It still has a narrative tone with limited mechanistic explanations related to findings

Response: Thank you so much to reviewer for important thing. We almost revised our discussion section according to our objectives. Along with, we merged few parts of results section according to discussion section (Ls. 421-615). We apologize for our mistakes.  Hope, it will satisfy to you.

Corresponding author

Email: oklong@hainanu.edu.cn