Variability in Growth Patterns and Tree-Ring Formation of East European Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) Provenances to Changing Climatic Conditions in Lithuania
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of the submitted manuscript entitled Variability in growth patterns and tree ring formation of East European Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) provenances to changing climatic conditions in Lithuania
The authors significantly improved the submitted manuscript. However, there is still no broader interpretation of the differences in sensitivity between provenances. It is also worth bearing in mind that climatic conditions are changing. This causes a shift in the timing of wood formation and thus changes in response to meteorological conditions during the growing season.
I have the most reservations about the last paragraph of the Discussion and Conclusions, which must be completely rewritten.
Specific comments:
L.24-27: Here, the authors wrote about the differences in sensitivity between the tested populations. However, there is no attempt to explain why this is so, neither in the abstract nor the main text. This is a significant result and should be properly discussed. It should be remembered that the climate is constantly changing, and the correlations with individual values of meteorological factors are different now than several dozen years ago, e.g.:
Waszak N, et al (2021) Investigating the Climate ‐ Growth Response of Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in Northern Poland. Atmosphere 12:1690. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12121690
Over the lifetime of trees, from planting to cutting down, such correlations will probably change quickly with the rate of climate change. Moreover, if the negative climate change scenarios materialize, many areas of Europe, including Lithuania, may fall outside the optimum climatic conditions for growing Scots pine.
Dyderski M, Paź S, Frelich LE, Jagodziński AM (2018) How much does climate change threaten European forest tree species distributions? Glob Chang Biol 24:1150–1163. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13925
It is worth taking this into account in the Discussion.
L.68-72: See also:
Misi D et al (2019) Differences in the climate-growth relationship of Scots Pine: a case study from Poland and Hungary. Forests 10:243. https://doi.org/10.3390/f10030243
L.478 and L.490: Please remove (Pinus sylvestris)
L.561: (Pinus sylvestris) - should be written with italics
L.732-754: This paragraph is written more like a summary of the main results and conclusions than a discussion. The authors do not refer to other scientific studies.
L.759-784: Here is a continuation of the summary of the most important results. Conclusions are where the authors can afford a more speculative interpretation of the obtained results than in the Discussion, which should also be strongly argued in the literature. Here the authors can point to gaps in the knowledge and something about future research.
Kind regards
Author Response
Thank you for valuable comments. Please find the responds in the attached file.
Regards
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I must note with satisfaction that the authors have significantly improved the manuscripts consistently using my suggestions. However, there are still several places where the manuscript needs their work (detailed comments are given below). My doubts were raised by the results of the superposed epoch analysis (SEA). Please check this analysis carefully whether an error has crept into it. I hope that my comments will be helpful in preparing the final version of the manuscript so that it can be accepted for publication.
P.1 L:20 „showed a bit higher” awkward wording, please correct
P.1 L:20 „create some certain expectations” awkward wording, please correct
P.1 L:37-39 I would rather say that climate change is manifesting in ...
P.2 L:45-46 Surely climatic conditions differ between forest types? Assuming that forest types are mainly determined by soil conditions, I do not think this statement is justified. On the other hand, not only the climate is changing but also the soil temperature depending on bioclimate zones, and this is certainly worth mentioning.
Lembrechts, J.J. et al. 2021. Global maps of soil temperature. Global Change Biology. 28(9), 3110-3144, doi: 10.1111/gcb.16060
P.2 L:56-57 This statement intended, as I understand it, to sum up this paragraph ignores the effect of the winter climate you mention earlier.
P.2 L:58-59 Please provide references
P.2 L:68-69 Be more accurate, especially when you refer to a specific study on northern temperate forests in Europe.
P.2 L:76-78 A more recent paper on the effect of the 2018 drought would fit here to reffer to:
Salomon, R.L. et al., 2022. The 2018 European heatwave led to stem dehydration but not to consistent growth reductions in forests. Nat Commun 13, 28. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27579-9
P.2 L:84-86 Surely adaptive plasticity and genotypic variability can be called processes?
P.2 L:86-88 This sentence does not follow directly from the previous one. I propose to briefly outline how phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation can be assessed so that the use of provenance trials for this purpose is more obvious. A good example of such a description can be found in Guo et al. 2021
Guo, X., Klisz, M., Puchałka, R., Silvestro, R., Faubert, P., Belien, E., Huang, J., Rossi, S., 2021. Common-garden experiment reveals clinal trends of bud phenology in black spruce populations from a latitudinal gradient in the boreal forest. J. Ecol. 108, 13582. doi:10.1111/1365-2745.13582
P.3 L:112-117 This paragraph, undoubtedly necessary at the end of the chapter Introduction is poorly linked to the previous ones, describing in detail climate-growth relationships in Scots pine. From this part of the manuscript it must be obvious why intra-species variation in climate sensitivity is worth investigating in the context of Scots pine adaptation to climate change.
Table 1 Use LON instead of LONG, units of measurement in square brackets
Figure 1 The coloured triangles used on the left map are almost invisible against the colour scale for MAT. It is necessary to use a different designation for the provenance groups, you can use different symbol shapes (triangle, inverted triangle, square, circle). In this case, all symbols in black. What do the polygons marked with a black solid line, the geographical extent of Scots pine, mean? If so, you need to describe this in the figure caption and provide a reference.
P.6 L:219-221 Surely only Tmean is sufficient to calculate the SPEI? This method uses the PET formula for which you need Tmin, Tmax and Ra. See:
Allen, R. G., Pereira, L. S., Raes, D., and Smith, M. (1998). Crop evapotranspiration-guidelines for computing crop water requirements. FAO Irrigation Drainage Paper 56 300:D05109. doi: 10.1016/j.eja.2010.12.001
P.7 L:222-223 What were the criteria for severe drought years, provide the SPEI cut-off value.
P.7 L:229-230 Why "approximately"?
P.7 L:231-232 Once again, why "approximately 10000 trees"?
P.7 L:240-243 A classification into central, southern, eastern, northern and western provenance groups is introduced here, while the method of distinguishing these groups has not been presented anywhere before.
P.8 L:250-251 Unclear what you mean, please formulate this sentence better.
P.8 L:252 "but not the wolf trees" surprising wording
P.9 L:325-329 There are several statistical methods for determining pointer years (which one was used here?) but only after they have been determined can it be verified whether negative pointer years coincide with severe drought years (SPEI <-2). The superposed epoch analysis (SEA) method is useful.
P.10 L:373 In chapter 2.5 Classification of Scots pine provenances we can find the information: "Out of 19 biocli-306 matic parameters taken from Fick and Hijmans [30], we selected 7 variables". While in this chapter the authors write "The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) that included 19 bioclimatic variables presented by Worldclim". I suggest correcting this inconsistency.
P.11 L:384-385 A description of the method used to distinguish clusters e.g. PAM is missing here.
Figure 5 The PCA biplot is not very legible, mainly because of overlapping provenance markings. Besides, I do not understand what the diagonal continuous line means.
P.14 L:465-469 "location-specific" better said "site-specific"
P.18 L:617-623 Surprising results for SEA, I admit that I can't logically explain why in the effect of crude droughts (SPEI <-2?) instead of observing a reduction in growth the opposite reaction is observed! Are you sure that in SEA you considered only negative pointer years?
P.19 L:676-680 Here it is worth referring to the issue of climatic marginality and discussing how your provenience defined as climatically marginal performs in relation to which are geographically marginal. A good example to reference is the paper by Klisz e al. 2018.
Klisz, M., Ukalski, K., Ukalska, J., Jastrzębowski, S., Puchałka, R., Przybylski, P., Mionskowski, M., Matras, J., 2018 What Can We Learn from an Early Test on the Adaptation of Silver Fir Populations to Marginal Environments? Forests 9, 441. doi:10.3390/f9070441
P.21 L:783-784 In this sentence it is worth clearly stating that considering only eastern provenances from the species range is a limitation of this study therefore as a recommendation for future studies it would be to consider the full variability (entire range) of the species.
Author Response
Thank you for valuable comments. Please find the responds in the attached file.
Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The review concerns the manuscript entitled Variability in growth patterns and tree ring formation of East European Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) provenances to changing climatic conditions in Lithuania
The manuscript submitted for review is a revised version of an earlier article entitled "Impact of temperature and precipitation on tree ring formation of East European Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) provenances in Lithuania".
The manuscript describes well-planned and substantiated provenance research. The results of these studies have potentially high utility in forestry practice as well as can be used for further research, providing an advance toward the current knowledge.
This version of the article is written appropriately, it is well-organized, contains all of the components I would expect, and the sections are well-developed. The introduction is informative and presents the research topic well. Materials and Methods are described clearly as well as in detail. The presentation of the results is clear too and does not raise my objections. The discussion and conclusions are well related to the purpose of the research and the results obtained. References are good and sufficient.
However, minor technical/editorial corrections are necessary. There are editorial errors in the text, as well as errors related to the reference to the figures and figure captions. Among other things, the content of the following lines needs to be corrected: 25-26; 198-199; 202; 222-223; 226; 233; 278; 292; 391; 413; 420-422; 425; 431; 437; 489; 522; 524; 525. My comments are marked in the attached manuscript.
Besides the previously mentioned weaknesses, I think (although I am not a native speaker) that the text needs to be reviewed and corrected for the English language.
Best regards,
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for valuable comments. Please find the responds in the attached file.
Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors significantly improved the manuscript. However, the sentences from lines 1168-1193: should be moved to Conclusions. After this minor correction, the manuscript should be suitable for publication in the Forests journal.
Kind regards
Author Response
The authors significantly improved the manuscript. However, the sentences from lines 1168-1193: should be moved to Conclusions. After this minor correction, the manuscript should be suitable for publication in the Forests journal.
Authors:
Dear reviewer, we can’t implement the suggested changes because we do not understand which sentences have to be removed to conclusions part. According to you, lines 1168-1193 must be moved. However, presented manuscript for your review had only 1069 rows in total, including all list of references.
Thus, we can’t implement the suggested changes
Kind regards
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
