Structure and Stability of Agroforestry Ecosystems: Insights into the Improvement of Service Supply Capacity of Agroforestry Ecosystems under the Karst Rocky Desertification Control
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Paper:
A review of studies on structure and stability of agroforestry ecosystems: Insights to the improvement of service supply capacity of agroforestry ecosystem for the rocky desertification control
This paper is “a systematic review of the global 14 research progress about the structure and stability of the agroforestry ecosystem”. It is a very interesting issues, to point out ideas for agroforestry systems in Karst landscapes. I leave here some general recommendations and others are in the pdf file:
Tittle: delete “A review of studies on”, and the new title would be: “Structure and stability of agroforestry ecosystems: Insights to the improvement of service supply capacity of agroforestry ecosystem for the rocky desertification control”
Introduction: lines 80-81, You can cite at least one or two works from other regions, for example Asia, South America and Central America (see pdf).
Methods: inform how many articles were identified in each database (you can also insert this information in Fig. 1)
Cite the information collected in the papers that you used for created the subsections.
Results: lines 161 and 172: It is not clear which factor
Figure 2: Improve the figure, so that each point is aligned with the year
Figure 5: Improve this figure. Letters are so small
Line 227: about cocoa, did you observe coffee studies? Coffee is very studied in Central an South America
Lines 247-249: This writing seems obvious. Is the analysis that simple?
Stability study of agroforestry ecosystems (Line 342): explore techniques that are described in the papers
Section 4.2: lines 414-416: Remember to explain that you used a Chinese database, and that was a bias
Line 619: Which terms do you suggest could be used?
Conclusions: Improve this section. Conclusions do not are a summary of results.
Do not cite Figs
Line 622: What others databases? Write in methodology
Lines 631-633: Do not repeat results. Conclude by showing the importance of the regions, linked to the climates, soils and vegetation typical of each one
Supplementary materials: Insert a Table with the 136 articles, with column Country/Region, Type of focus...
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript by Shilian Jiang, Kangning Xiong and Jie Xiao presents a systematic review of the literature on agroforestry used as a restoration and production tool in areas with rocky desertification.
While the subject is important and the authors have invested an important amount of time in their analysis, the manuscript suffers from a number of limitations in its present form.
It is my opinion that the manuscript can be improved by:
- Working better the abstract to make it reflect the main message of the manuscript. Also, never use "etc" in the abstract
- To explain in a more direct way their objectives that remain too ambitious “Therefore, based on bibliometric statistics, this article systematically reviews the 89 research progress and landmark results of global agroforestry ecosystem structure and 90 stability and discusses the critical scientific issues that need to be addressed urgently, aim-91 ing to enlighten the exploration of agroforestry ecosystem structure and stability in karstic desertification management, to promote the improvement of material product and eco-93 logical service supply capacity.”
Can the authors simply state, for example, that the objective is to find gaps in agroforestry research for areas with rocky (karst) soils? Or something of the style?
- Results can be summarized. For example section 3.1 is highly irrelevant, all new topics behave exponentially, and still, literature remains scarce in the subject, less that 20 in 202 for example.
- In 3.2, it is not clear what they refer to “structural characteristic, structural design, structural optimization, stability, and influencing factor”. Are you talking of species choices, density of tree and crop choices? Use of irrigation or not? Soil development? Etc. Please define better.
- Can figures 4 and 5 be combined? This is just a suggestion to save space
- It is not clear how the sections 3.5.1 to 3.5.4 were written. The various authors read all papers? Did certain questions were addressed specifically for each section? Please explain more your methods and how you arrived to summarize the data.
Considering these comments, it is my opinion that the manuscript requires major revision before being ready for publication.
Author Response
请看附件。
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript ID: forests-1704726
Title of the manuscript: A review of studies on structure and stability of agroforestry ecosystems: Insights to the improvement of service supply capacity of agroforestry ecosystem for the rocky desertification control
To The Editor
Journal of Forests.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to review the manuscript. I have gone thoroughly to the manuscript and found that; the manuscript has potential and to be published in the Journal. However; I personally feel the following comments are needed for the quality of the manuscript:
Comments
- Topic: Topic of the manuscript can be improved.
- Abstract: Abstract needs to be revised, providing important finding of the study.
- Introduction: (i) Hypothesis of the study to be given.
(ii) Clear pointwise objectives of the study to be given.
(iii) References are very old and can be replaced by new ones.
- Methods can be improved.
- Results: The result section is also providing informations of references. How it is different than the discussion section. If it is possible, result and discussion can be combined together.
- Discussion: In this section the repetition word/sentence can be reduced in each heading.
I personally feel that the revision of manuscript can be suitable for its quality and wide readership.
I also recommend the ms can be considered after needful modification.
Comments for author File: Comments.docx
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript reviews the progress of research on agroforestry ecosystem structure by systematic review of scientific information provided by databases. Through an overview of the volume and temporal distribution of relevant literature releases and the global distribution of research regions and institutions, the results highlight the gaps and limitations of previous work on the structure and stability of agroforestry ecosystems. Still, I think the paper need to be revised in the following two main aspects. First and for most, I didn’t catch the relationship between the global review on the development of agroforestry structure & stability and the rocky desertification control, at least in the manuscript, there’s no words on the research situation of agroforestry application in the karst region. I think this part needs to be supplemented. Secondly, the readability of the whole manuscript is very poor as there are far too many grammar issues in the long sentences. So I think the language requires critical editing before submitting. Overall, the manuscript need major revision and reconsider publication.
Author Response
Please see the attachments
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors made significant improvements to the article.
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers.
Greetings!
Thank you very much for your recognition of our paper and your suggestions on our paper last time.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
This is the second time I have the opportunity to review your manuscripts, so I will skip the description of it.
As far as I am concerned, the authors have done a big effort in answering my previous comments. Congratulations.
I am still concerned just about the English grammar, as many sentences look awkward. The new abstract, for example needs various English grammar revision. The text should read, for example "Its (without apostrophe) species composition..."; also "The study is based on the WOS and CNKI literature databases UPON WHICH WE performed bibliometric ANALYSIS3; And the next sentence is incomplete "Reviewing 136 major research advances...", did the authors meant "Results showed 136 major research advances...". And so on.
I understand that grammar editing is expensive but it is necessary so that the articles will be well received by readers.
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers.
Greetings!
We thank you very much for your suggestions on our manuscript, and we revised our manuscript again according to your suggestion. Please read it.
Point 1: Questions about English expression, especially in the abstract.
Response 1: According to your suggestions, it is pointed out that we still have problems with English expression in the abstract and the full text. The main points and contents of our revision are as follows:
(i) abstract: Agroforestry provides essential ecosystem services; its structure and stability directly determine ecosystem function and service provision. To sustain agroforestry ecosystem functions and services in the long term to meet the needs of people. This study conducted a literature search and statistical analysis based on WOS and CNKI literature databases. Reviewed 136 literature reports on studies of agroforestry ecosystem structure and stability. The landmark results are summarized in five aspects of agroforestry ecosystem structure characteristics, structure optimization, structure design, stability research, and influence factors. And on this basis, the key scientific issues that need to be solved are summarized, and their Insights for improving the supply capacity of agroforestry ecosystem services under the rocky desertification control are discussed.
(ii) introduction: lines31-32, lines90-92, lines31-32, lines97, lines108-109.
(iii) methods: lines131.
(iv) results: lines164, lines232, lines272-273, lines296, lines310, lines344-345, lines379, lines432, lines445.
(v) discussion:lines580, lines600, lines615.
Thank you again for your valuable comments, and we have made each and every revision based on your suggestions for the above changes, please read them.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Based on my previous comments, authors have made substantial changes in the manuscript and can be considered for publication in its present form.
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers.
Greetings!
Thank you very much for your recognition of our paper and your suggestions on our paper last time.
Reviewer 4 Report
No other comments
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers.
Greetings!
Thank you very much for your recognition of our paper and your suggestions on our paper last time.
