Simulating Wind Disturbances over Rubber Trees with Phenotypic Trait Analysis Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

As a whole, I feel that the revisions and additions to the manuscript add value to both its readability and scientific merit. Understandably, no study is perfect. The authors did a nice job of acknowledging many of the identified study limitations with their revisions. That said, the manuscript would benefit from the acknowledgment of the following limitation:

1)      Lack of replicates – given that there were only three trees used for the trial, this makes it difficult to draw conclusions on the mechanical loading of plantation grown rubber trees/trees in general under hurricane conditions.

Beyond this, the authors did a nice job at incorporating much of the additional literature that was suggested. Although, it would still be of value if the others were to cite Gilman et al (2008) as it was the first and possibly only study to use a high powered fan to blow live trees at hurricane force winds.

Gilman, E.F., Masters, F. and Grabosky, J.C., 2008. Pruning affects tree movement in hurricane force wind. Arboriculture and Urban Forestry, 34(1), p.20.

Overall, the study is novel as it pertains to the use of lidar to evaluate trees under simulated winds. The manuscript is well written, and the revisions made to the current draft make it better suited for publication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your suggestion, it is very helpful for us to improve the manuscript, we have carefully revised the manuscript and uploaded the specific details of the response through the file, please download and view the word file.

Wishing you good health and every success.

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors.

      I revised the article again: "Simulating wind disturbances over rubber trees with phenotypic trait analysis using terrestrial laser scanning".

      Analyzing the original article and the new version, I found that you implemented the most important recommendations proposed in the first review round. I also inform you that sending the cover letter and the article with the feature to track changes was essential to assist in the review work.

      I conclude my review by congratulating you on the experiment and the article produced.

 

Respectfully,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

  Thank you very much for your hard work and recognition of our manuscript. We also appreciate your reminder that we have sent a cover letter with each revision and that the revised parts of the manuscript are highlighted in blue.

  Wishing you good health and every success.

Kind reagards.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

Overall, there is value in the study and the manuscript was well written. That said, the suggested revisions will add context to the study and make it better suited for publication as well as further contribute to the subject matter of wind and trees.

The LiDAR components of the study are well thought out and make for an interesting use of the technology. Granted this makes up a significant portion of the study, there seem to be some gaps in tree and wind component of the study and would benefit from some additional justifications regarding the methods and study design as well as a deeper dive into some of the past literature.

The manuscript doesn’t reference a considerable amount of the literature relevant to trees and hurricanes. For example, Gilman et al (2008) also used a high powered fan to blow trees at hurricane force winds and Everham and Brokaw (1996) compiled a sizeable review of all pre-existing hurricane literature. Although, there is plenty of other available literature on the topic of trees and extreme wind events. Listed below are some additional studies worth checking out to potential reference in the current study. Although, there is much more on the topic.

It would be beneficial to explore some additional variables that could increase tree damage/likelihood of failure and or account for wind resistance: species form, bio mechanically properties, defects, site conditions, soil type, pruning, precipitation/soil moisture content, etc.

Please see some additional specific comments below.

[Line 23] –  17.5 m/s (39 mph) is at the lowest end of what is considered a tropical storm, boarder line normal possible wind speeds for many areas globally. That’s said, I’m confused as to what effect was expected to be seen with such a low wind speed. Unless a tree has a major structurally defects, most trees are well adapted to such wind speeds, especially trees found in areas where extreme wind events are common. I see later on that the trees in the study area are commonly exposed to winds that only exceed 7 mph. The 39 mph winds on the high end of the treatments is obviously greater than the normal day weather/ wind speeds. That said, tree failures/severe damage don’t usually occur at such low wind speeds unless the tree is loaded with defects. Furthermore, it is even less likely that failures will occur when there are neighboring trees present such as with a forested area. Given all the previous research on the topic as it relates to trees and storm damage, I’m confused as why such low wind speeds were chosen for the study. A justification of this decision would add value to the writeup.

 

[Line 143] – When were the trees transplanted, how long have they been in the ground, and how long since they established (i.e., roots have grown out into the surrounding soil)? Was there any data collected to see if the root balls moved across the different with speeds or if the soil cracked? Also, it would be good to know if the trees were planted from seed, bare root, container, or field dug.

[Lines 170 - 171] – There were only three replicates used in the trial. This makes it very difficult to make inferences when the data set is so limited. This limitation should be justified in your Analysis of Our Methods section.

[Line 190] – In Figure 1 (C) it appears that there is more space between tree 2 and 3 than between tree 2 and 1. The methods stated that there was 2m between each tree, is that correct or was the spacing different between the trees? Additionally, there are considerable structural difference between the three trees (i.e., dominant central leader – Left tree, competing stem midway up the canopy – center tree, and competing lower in the canopy – right tree). The variability across tree structures can have an effect on how each tree reacts to the wind loading. If this was intentional, then there should be a justification as to why. If not, then this needs to be addressed in the analysis.

[Lines 177-179] – Unless I’m mistaken, given the setup and stationary aspect of the fan, you were only able to generate straight-line winds. Hurricanes/typhoons are dynamic winds that can vary in speed and direction throughout the storm. It would be beneficial it include your reasoning behind the stationary design. Adding flappers and or a rotational mechanism on the mounting for the fan would have created a wind that is more inline with those that occur during a hurricane/typhoon.

[Lines 540-543] – Tree 3 was also partially protected by trees 1 and 2. Why weren’t protection factors from neighboring tree considered in the model/analysis? This is especially relevant given that the study looks at plantation/forest trees rather than open grown trees found in urban areas which may be spaced considerably further apart.

Additional Citations worth reviewing for possible inclusion in the introduction or discussion:

Dupont, S., 2016. A simple wind–tree interaction model predicting the probability of wind damage at stand level. Agricultural and forest meteorology, 224, pp.49-63.

Dupont, S., Défossez, P., Bonnefond, J.M., Irvine, M.R. and Garrigou, D., 2018. How stand tree motion impacts wind dynamics during windstorms. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 262, pp.42-58.

Everham, E.M. and Brokaw, N.V., 1996. Forest damage and recovery from catastrophic wind. The botanical review, 62(2), pp.113-185.

Gardiner, B., Peltola, H. and Kellomäki, S., 2000. Comparison of two models for predicting the critical wind speeds required to damage coniferous trees. Ecological modelling, 129(1), pp.1-23.

Gardiner, B., Byrne, K., Hale, S., Kamimura, K., Mitchell, S.J., Peltola, H. and Ruel, J.C., 2008. A review of mechanistic modelling of wind damage risk to forests. Forestry, 81(3), pp.447-463

Gilman, E.F., Masters, F. and Grabosky, J.C., 2008. Pruning affects tree movement in hurricane force wind. Arboriculture and Urban Forestry, 34(1), p.20.

Hale, S.E., Gardiner, B., Peace, A., Nicoll, B., Taylor, P. and Pizzirani, S., 2015. Comparison and validation of three versions of a forest wind risk model. Environmental Modelling & Software, 68, pp.27-41.

Jackson, T., Shenkin, A., Wellpott, A., Calders, K., Origo, N., Disney, M., Burt, A., Raumonen, P., Gardiner, B., Herold, M. and Fourcaud, T., 2019. Finite element analysis of trees in the wind based on terrestrial laser scanning data. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 265, pp.137-144.

Kamimura, K., Gardiner, B., Dupont, S. and Finnigan, J., 2019. Agent-based modelling of wind damage processes and patterns in forests. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 268, pp.279-288.

Poh, H.J., Chan, W.L., Wise, D.J., Lim, C.W., Khoo, B.C., Gobeawan, L., Ge, Z., Eng, Y., Peng, J.X., Raghavan, V.S. and Jadhav, S.S., 2020. Wind load prediction on single tree with integrated approach of L-system fractal model, wind tunnel, and tree aerodynamic simulation. AIP Advances, 10(7), p.075202.

Seidl, R., Rammer, W. and Blennow, K., 2014. Simulating wind disturbance impacts on forest landscapes: tree-level heterogeneity matters. Environmental Modelling & Software, 51, pp.1-11.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors

    Your article: "Phenotypic trait analysis of rubber trees under a forced draft fan-induced hurricane loading using terrestrial laser scanning" presents a relevant and still little explored topic. In order to contribute to the improvement of the article, I presented 25 suggestions of the lesser impact that can be viewed in the digital file. I request your attention to the following suggestions:

1) Title: it would be interesting to improve the title. It's confusing.

2) Attention to long titles in figures and tables. Prioritize comments in the body of the text.

3) The experiment has some points that need better justifications: showing the use of only three trees. From the images, you can see that there is a larger area for planting more trees. Is this indicative of an early experiment?

4) The problem related to the use of TLS in commercial stands related to occlusion is known (commented briefly on line 590). Normally, the use of data collected via terrestrial platform has restrictions in relation to the treetops, which could be solved using aerial data (with manned or unmanned aircraft). Please present this discussion further in the article.

5) Standardize measurement units for the SI system: temperature, altitudes, lengths, distances, etc.

6) Table 1: the literature review here is very interesting and contributes to the work. However, couldn't the presentation of this in table format be replaced by text? I believe that the space destined for the article would be better used.

7) Line 145: Figure for the location of the island and the study site?

8) Line 207: Better explain the arrangement of TLS stations at the study site. As these are multiple stations, how were the targets for co-registration distributed? Or were detailing present on site used, for example, some part of the metallic column as a reference? The use of a figure would facilitate the understanding of data collection.

9) Line 217: Please cite hardware and applications (Matlab?) used to process point clouds.

10) Line 219: Detail the co-registration of point clouds: the mathematical model used and parameters used.

11) Line 221: Please detail: the algorithm and parameters used in leaf/branch point cloud classification with the graphics-based wood–leaf classification method.

12) The creation of a data processing flowchart would facilitate the understanding of the processing used in the study.

13) Lines 249 to 327: Please cite the bibliographic references that were used to extract the tree morphology parameters;

14) Line 379: please provide the values ​​for the volume of the convex hull for each tree and in each situation shown in figure 4.

15) Line 484: “These fluctuations may be caused by some uncontrollable natural factors and errors in our measurement data or calculation methods”. It would be interesting to deepen the discussion and try to support this statement considering the references presented;

16) Check the conclusions that are contemplating all the objectives presented for the work.

I conclude my comments by congratulating them for all the work performed and for the version of the article presented.

Respectfully.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf