Variation and Driving Mechanisms of Bark Thickness in Larix gmelinii under Surface Fire Regimes
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript (MS) presents a study on variations of bark in L. gmelinii as dependent on tree morphology and a few external factors. The study is based on rich material and may be of interest for readership engaged into forest fires' research area.
Before a publication, the MS requires some improvements and clarifying of a few points.
Figure 5ab. What is the sense of linear fitting while it's clear that the relation is non-linear, probably, a log or a power function shape? What is the sense of considering tree height as explained through bark thickness variation? Are the authors going to estimate the tree height through measuring of bark thickness?
l. 206-220. What is the sense of retelling the content of Table 1 word for word? Also, the table is never cited in the text.
l. 242: were significantly correlated with both SD and tree height (Fig.3). -> Figure 3 doesn't contain data on tree height. The point requires editing.
Minor comments:
l. 15, 61, 105-107 -> the Latin names must be given together with the authors' names at the first appearance in the text.
l. 31 -> the citation format in Forests seems to be through the use of [].
l. 63 -> are related? Related with each other? The sentence may require some editing.
l. 80, 83, 84: 1). -> unnecessary full stop.
l. 98 -> 40 years? (1981-2020).
l. 100 -> using 'earth' instead of 'soil' is somewhat unusual in the literature. Probably, it's better to avoid this.
l. 103: and had experienced a single surface fire event between 1987 and 2001 -> it's not so far in the past. Why is the exact fire date not known?
l. 173 -> the abbreviations TBT, IBT, OBT appear for the first time without explanations.
l. 284 -> height?
l. 290: These findings similar with -> are similar?
l. 311 -> Conclusion?
References require extensive formatting in accordance with the instructions.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageEnglish is quite understandable and clear, minor language editing may be necessary. In my experience, English is above average for non-native speakers.
Author Response
Dear reviewer 1,
We appreciate your valuable comments and time. It was your valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. We have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to address every one of them. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meets your high standards. We welcome further constructive comments if any.
All modifications in the Revised manuscript (Marked revison-forests-2783182) have been highlighted in red. Also, the line number of the revised sentence is the line number of the Revised manuscript (Cleaned revison-Forests-2783182) version. We provide a Revised manuscript (Cleaned revison-Forests-2783182) version for you and the reviewers to review.
Below we provide the point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Thanks again to you and the reviewers for your valuable comments on our manuscript!
Sincerely,
Yanhong Liu
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Comments:
In the work “Variation and Driving Mechanisms of Bark Thickness in Larix gmelinii under Surface Fire Regimes” (forests-2783182), the authors measured two bark thicknesses in Larix gmelinii trees, and made several regressions and concluded that stem diameter was the primary factor influencing those variables. The study is interesting and falls within the journal's scope well. Unfortunately, I cannot see how fire regimes had impacted those bark thickness, there is no single data point of the fire which was the authors’ intention of this study. My concerns may be useful in their revised manuscript.
Major issues:
i. If there is no fire regime data, the aim of this study should be re-targeted, probably some public global fire datasets could be used in your specific study.
ii. The 274 datapoints should be publicly available for the community, which means you can upload it as supplementary materials or in some data repositories, e.g., Dryad or Figshare.
iii. I suggest changing the title to “Intrinsic and extrinsic factors that impacted bark thickness in Larix gmelinii trees in the Greater Khingan Mountains, China”, which is more suitable for the research scenario.
Small issues:
L43: If bark thickness is useful in exploring higher-order ecological issues on population fitness, can you give more examples here?
L173-174: Define TBT, OBT & IBT at the first appearance.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2
We appreciate you for your precious time in reviewing our paper and providing valuable comments. It was your valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. We have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to address every one of them. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meets your high standards. We welcome further constructive comments if any.
All modifications in the Revised manuscript (Marked revison-forests-2783182) have been highlighted in red. Also, the line number of the revised sentence is the line number of the Revised manuscript (Cleaned revison-Forests-2783182) version. We provide a Revised manuscript (Cleaned revison-Forests-2783182) version for you and the reviewers to review.
Below we provide the point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Thanks again to you and the reviewers for your valuable comments on our manuscript!
Sincerely,
Yanhong Liu, PhD
liuyh@bjfu.edu.cn
Professor, Beijing Key Laboratory of Forest Resources and Ecosystem Process, Beijing Forestry University, 100083, Beijing, China
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis review is about the manuscript entitled “Variation and Driving Mechanisms of Bark Thickness in Larix gmelinii under Surface Fire Regimes” [ID forests-2783182]. Overall, I found that the work is interesting. The manuscript concerns the influence of various factors on the thickness of the bark of trees that experienced a surface fire. I think that the article has great scientific potential. However, I have a few comments and suggestions for authors to consider in the revision.
Specific comments to the manuscript:
· Line 98: error in the sentence "Over the past 20 years (1981—2020") - please correct it, it should be „ Over the past 40 years (1981—2020")
· Lines 137-139: „Climate factors including mean temperature (MT) and annual precipitation (AP) were extracted by Worldclim version 2.1 31.” –- please specify this information, whether it was the average annual air temperature for the period 1981-2020 or another value/values, similarly please write about precipitation. Were these data for each year in the years 1981-2020 or average values for the entire multi-year period?
· Lines 171- 179 – please explain all abbreviations that appear in these sentences: not explaining these abbreviations makes it difficult to follow and understand the text. The explanation of some abbreviations appears only in the Discussion section.
· Line 183 - caption to Figure 3, sentence "Brown for outer bark, dark green for inner bark." – this information probably concerns Fig. 3d, please place it after the explanatory information 3d.
· Lines 195-197 caption for Figure 4, please explain all abbreviations in both figures
· Line 311- please correct the title of the section, "Discussion" should be changed to Conclusions
General notes:
1. References in the text require correction in accordance with the publisher's requirements- according to MDPI standards.
2. The description of the literature item needs to be corrected as required by the publisher- according to MDPI standards.
Good luck with the publication.
Best regards,
Author Response
Dear Reviewer3
We appreciate you your precious time in reviewing our paper and providing valuable comments. It was your valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. We have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to address every one of them. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meets your high standards. We welcome further constructive comments if any.
All modifications in the Revised manuscript (Marked revison-forests-2783182) have been highlighted in red. Also, the line number of the revised sentence is the line number of the Revised manuscript (Cleaned revison-Forests-2783182) version. We provide a Revised manuscript (Cleaned revison-Forests-2783182) version for you and the reviewers to review.
Below we provide the point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. Thanks again to you and the reviewers for your valuable comments on our manuscript!
Sincerely,
Yanhong Liu, PhD
liuyh@bjfu.edu.cn
Professor, Beijing Key Laboratory of Forest Resources and Ecosystem Process, Beijing Forestry University, 100083, Beijing, China
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe presented revised manuscript (MS) has been definitely improved. Minor editing might be required but it can be done by technical editors.
Still, the MS has a problem with the Reference list. Probably, the authors use a software to automatically formate the list and it doesn't function properly. Probably, technical editing will solve the problem.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageEnglish is well enough for a publication. Minor corrections might be pertinent.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The authors seem to have done good work in revising the manuscript and I think it can be accepted for publication in the journal. I have no further comments now, cheers!
