Spatial Distribution and Determinants of Aboveground Biomass in a Subalpine Coniferous Forest in Southwestern China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The Paper deals with actually demanded topic – analysis and quantification of the aboveground biomass on regional level (especially site extrem of subalpine forests up to upper forest limit), case study from region of the China. Concrete Study presents very interesting information’s, described inspiring used methods and remarkable results. 

Presented paper is by my opinion good prepared and designed in standard requirements. I´m satisfied with overall Quality of Article. Abstract is comprehensive, the Introduction Chapter is adequate, broad and clear. Used Materials and Methods with proposed Research Design are adequate. Results fulfil scientific standard and Discussion is too adequate for this Article. Authors have used above standard number of references (68). I have some next small comments and recommendations, which by my Opinion target to improve to final quality of this Article:

1.Please, make carefully corrections of all references in whole text according MDPI requirements (not Authors names with Year of publication, but only sequence number).

2. Please use numbering of rows for improving of Reviewers comments in whole paper 

3. Please modify tree species scientific name in whole text to italics (e.g. page 2 Picea spp. – Picea spp.).

4. I recommend present to introduction of sub-chapter 2.1 too some altitude characteristics of Study sites. I understand, that some information’s about Altitudes are described in Table 1 on next page, but I think that they are very important information’s by analyse of subalpine forests.

5. I think, that not all values in Table 1 must be presented on 2 decimal places. I recommend present 0 decimal places by elevation, slope, Aspect, stem density, DBH; and only 1 decimal places by SOM and SR. 

6. Please, append to some graphs in Figure 1 information’s about R2 and P (graphs (a), (d), (e)).

After making those modifications I recommend public this original paper in Forests Journal.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments to the authors (2667611)

The present study is about the “Spatial distribution and determinants of aboveground biomass in a subalpine coniferous forest in southwestern China”. It further explores the dynamics of the carbon pool in forest ecosystems and is sensitive to biotic and abiotic factors.

The manuscript is interesting, however, some minor errors were found. It was found hard to comments without lines number in the Ms. I have listed some of the these in the specific comments below, although the list is not exhaustive.

 Specific comments:

 Method- The equations are missing in the methodology section.

 Results and Discussion- The findings needs to be supported with current citation.

 Conclusion- This part is general. It needs to be improved.

 References-Format the citation and references according to the journal format.

What is (Figure S2)?

 I strongly encourage you to revise the manuscript to address the issues mentioned above. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf