Long Term Seasonal Variability on Litterfall in Tropical Dry Forests, Western Thailand
, Sathid Thinkampheang 1, Lamthai Asanok 5, Wongsatorn Phumphuang 6, Noppakun Danrad 1,* and Sura Pattanakiat 7,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This ms has been well written in English. The topic is fit to “forests”. The authors used a big dataset of 28-year litterfall data to explore the effects of environmental factors on the production/quantity of litterfall of leaves, flowers and fruits. The results are interesting and significant for us to know further nutrient recycling in mixed deciduous forests which are important in Southeast Asia. I just have suggestions on minor revisions as following.
Line 2: I suggest changing “tropical dry forests” to “in a tropical mixed deciduous forest”.
Line 77-81: I suggest authors to present scientific questions directly instead of study objectives.
Line 96: the size of number on the map is too small to be seen.
Line 317: the lines on the maps are quite thin, suggest making them thicker.
Line 364: Here is a general suggestion on “Discussion”: strengthen the discussion on the overlay between seasonality and annual trend, in particular its climate drivers.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript presents an enormous amount of litterfall data in a tropical dry forest in Thailand. Although the manuscript is generally descriptive, the dataset is exceptional and will be an important contribution to the field. However, I found several challenges in reading this manuscript.
The data analysis section (2.4) is not well structured and hard to follow. The first paragraph summarizes what the authors did for Fig. 9 - 11, but it overlooks the methods used for the other results. The second paragraph reads as if GAM has never been mentioned in the text, but it is mentioned in the previous paragraph. The third paragraph introduces complications by discussing both non-lagged and lagged GAMs. Ideally, the non-lagged GAM should be explained in the previous paragraph, allowing for a more focused explanation of the lagged GAM in the subsequent paragraph.
The font sizes in most of the figures are extremely small. Please check all the figures again and make adjustments as needed.
Other comments:
Line 69-70: Long-term does not matter with “space”. Please tweak the sentence.
Line 88: “The MDF” sounds like “the MDF within MKWRS” but it is probably not (it’s too large). I would suggest moving this sentence before introducing MKWRS and removing “the”.
Line 100-105: Do these describe the information for the 4-ha plot or MKWRS?
Line 128: SOI is not introduced in the main text yet.
Line 214: “, fruit litter was” should be “, mean fruit litter was”. “for fruit litter” should be removed.
Line 214: What do “other components” include?
Line 216-217: This sentence should belong to the next paragraph introducing Fig. 7. I didn’t understand this sentence until I saw Fig. 7.
Line 277-278: Table 1 seems for the non-lagged GAM.
Line 399-405: The role of this paragraph is not clear. These statements are obvious and not directly related to litterfall.
Fig. 1: The meaning of rectangle - Thailand and rectangle Mae Klong Watershed is not very clear.
Fig. 2a: Each point seems to indicate monthly rainfall. Please fix the text (annual rainfall) or the figure.
Fig. 4: What do the two horizontal dashed lines indicate?
Fig. 9-11: Most of the readers may not be familiar with these figures. Please add more details or clarifications in the legend or the main text.
Fig. 12b: The presentation is unclear, making interpretation challenging. Please add more details or clarifications in the legend or the main text.
Species names are not consistently italicized (e.g., lines 353-356).
The English is generally fine, but there are several typos, and some sentences can be clearer.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
