Response of Plant Phenology on Microclimate Change Depending on Land Use Intensity in Seoul, Central Korea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article examines an interesting aspect of climate change – the impact of urbanization. The relationship of the phenology of Mongolian oak and cherry, and frequency and length of abnormal shoots of Korean red pine with degree of urbanization and temperature was studied. The results of the spectral analysis of remote sensing were supplemented and verified by the characteristics obtained by classical methods. As a result, a significant change in phenology is shown due to the degree of urbanization of the territory. The work is logically presented. As a result, conclusions are drawn about the adaptation measures of urban areas to minimize negative consequences for the environment.

Remarks: there is no formula with the number (3).

There is not visualization of the urbanization ratios.

Fig. 3 – the map with the temperature of 2021 seems unnecessary, no conclusion follows from it.

The right part of Fig. 3 is poorly visible.

In the Fig. 4. title "B: DoY for green-up date of cherry" is not mistake, may be?

In Fig. 4, the title "B: Boy for green-cherry update" is not an error, maybe this is the flowering date of cherry?

In the Methods 4 Mongolian oak phenodates were determined (green-up, maturity, senescence, and dormancy). The analysis shows the relationship only green-up date with temperature. Do the rest of the phenodates reacted to temperature?

What a temperature shown in Fig.5, range 13.6-15.2°C? The average for the year? the average for spring?

The influence of the height factor of observation points is not discussed. How correlated are altitude, temperature and degree of urbanization?

Author Response

Response to Reviewers' comments

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you for reviewers’ valuable advice and comments. We answered faithfully to reviewers’ questions and revised our manuscript be reflecting reviewers’ valuable advice and comments.

Thank you again for reviewers’ kind advice and comments.

Sincerely Yours,

Chang Seok Lee

Reviewer #1

The article examines an interesting aspect of climate change – the impact of urbanization. The relationship of the phenology of Mongolian oak and cherry, and frequency and length of abnormal shoots of Korean red pine with degree of urbanization and temperature was studied. The results of the spectral analysis of remote sensing were supplemented and verified by the characteristics obtained by classical methods. As a result, a significant change in phenology is shown due to the degree of urbanization of the territory. The work is logically presented. As a result, conclusions are drawn about the adaptation measures of urban areas to minimize negative consequences for the environment.

Remarks: there is no formula with the number (3).

☞ It is our mistake. We revised the numbers. Lines 181 and 192.

There is not visualization of the urbanization ratios.

☞ We added a map (Figure 2) containing spatial distribution of vegetation and land-use types and thus, allowed comparison of the urbanization ratio among sites.

Fig. 3 – the map with the temperature of 2021 seems unnecessary, no conclusion follows from it.

☞ We removed it.

The right part of Fig. 3 is poorly visible.

☞ We revised the map to increase the resolution.

In the Fig. 4. title "B: DoY for green-up date of cherry" is not mistake, may be?

☞ It is our mistake. We revised it.

In Fig. 4, the title "B: Boy for green-cherry update" is not an error, maybe this is the flowering date of cherry?

☞ Thank you. It is our mistake. We revised it.

In the Methods 4 Mongolian oak phenodates were determined (green-up, maturity, senescence, and dormancy). The analysis shows the relationship only green-up date with temperature. Do the rest of the phenodates reacted to temperature?

☞ All have changes, but other factors do not show as clear changes as the green-up date. Therefore, most of the research of other researchers tends to focus on the green-up date.

What a temperature shown in Fig.5, range 13.6-15.2°C? The average for the year? the average for spring?

☞ It is annual mean temperature determined from temperature data collected at ten-minute intervals from 1997 to 2021 at Automatic Weather Stations (AWS).

The influence of the height factor of observation points is not discussed. How correlated are altitude, temperature and degree of urbanization?

☞ The study sites were selected as places with similar conditions as possible other than the degree of urbanization. Since the difference in altitude is within 100 m, it is judged that the temperature difference according to the difference in altitude is not large. We revised our manuscript by including these contents in the site description section.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I reviewed the manuscript "Response of Plant Phenology on Microclimate Change Depending on Land Use Intensity in Seoul, Central Korea". Although the topic is important in the context of climate change, the manuscript has several serious issues and flaws. In general, the manuscript requires more analysis and in-depth investigations to meet the merit for publication in the Forest. I have provided my concerns below.

1- Although the objective of the manuscript is clear, the Introduction section lacks suitable literature. The authors should add more case studies related to phenology change assessment associated with climate change and specifically urbanization (land use intensity). In this regard, the authors should mention the drawbacks/limitations of the previous studies to justify the contribution of the current manuscript.

2- Table 1; What do the "Year" and "Production Year" mean? Did you use only a single-year land use map? How did you measure the urban intensity using only one land use map?

3- Please include the land use map and the biotop map of the study area, along with their detailed specifications.

4- Section 2.2 is "Image analysis" and Section 2.3 is "Analysis of the satellite images", which is confusing. I suggest authors first explain the phenology (Sections 2.2, 2.4, and 2.5) and then explain the image analysis and phenology extraction methods for clarification. This will make the manuscript more organized.

6- As the title implied the impact of land use intensity should have been investigated, though no related analysis was reported. The methodology and results section required thorough revision mostly by adding new experiments and analysis to make the manuscript richer in content as an academic manuscript. Therefore, the authors should investigate urbanization over the study period and investigate the relationship between phenology parameters and land use intensity. Considering only the temperature as a measure of land use intensity is not enough for an original research paper.

7- How did you determine suitable pixels of MODIS EVI for your analysis? The MODIS EVI data, at their best, has 250 m spatial resolution, and according to Figure 1, some point-based sites were collected for the analysis. How did you ensure that the MODIS EVI pixels only include one land cover type, e.g., Q. mongolica? These uncertainties should be explicitly explained with proper illustrations to reduce the ambiguity and uncertainty of the results.

8- The authors should extract the three phenology parameters of SOS, EOS, and GSL for comparison. This is necessary to make the manuscript and the results section more exhaustive. The impact of land use intensity and temperature on SOS, EOS, and GSL of the three considered tree types should be investigated explicitly/separately.

9- Please include new Figures and illustrate the spatial distribution of phenology parameters and the land use intensity to better convey the message of the manuscript.

10- The discussion section requires modifications. First, several sentences in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 are redundant/repetitive and do not directly relate to the manuscript and repetitive. Furthermore, the authors should mention the limitations of their work.

Author Response

Response to Reviewers' comments

 

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you for reviewers’ valuable advice and comments. We answered faithfully to reviewers’ questions and revised our manuscript be reflecting reviewers’ valuable advice and comments.

Thank you again for reviewers’ kind advice and comments.

Sincerely Yours,

Chang Seok Lee

 

Reviewer #2

 

I reviewed the manuscript "Response of Plant Phenology on Microclimate Change Depending on Land Use Intensity in Seoul, Central Korea". Although the topic is important in the context of climate change, the manuscript has several serious issues and flaws. In general, the manuscript requires more analysis and in-depth investigations to meet the merit for publication in the Forest. I have provided my concerns below.

1- Although the objective of the manuscript is clear, the Introduction section lacks suitable literature. The authors should add more case studies related to phenology change assessment associated with climate change and specifically urbanization (land use intensity). In this regard, the authors should mention the drawbacks/limitations of the previous studies to justify the contribution of the current manuscript.

☞ We revised our manuscript by reflecting reviewer’s valuable comments.

2- Table 1; What do the "Year" and "Production Year" mean? Did you use only a single-year land use map? How did you measure the urban intensity using only one land use map?

☞ We added Biotop map (Figure 2), which is prepared by supplementing the land use map through the field check and removed Table 1.

3- Please include the land use map and the biotop map of the study area, along with their detailed specifications.

☞ We included the biotope map by reflecting the reviewer’s comment.

4- Section 2.2 is "Image analysis" and Section 2.3 is "Analysis of the satellite images", which is confusing. I suggest authors first explain the phenology (Sections 2.2, 2.4, and 2.5) and then explain the image analysis and phenology extraction methods for clarification. This will make the manuscript more organized.

☞ We revised our manuscript by reflecting reviewer’s advice as the follows: “ 2.2. Analysis of phenology based on satellite image” and “2.3. Calculation of vegetation index”.

6- As the title implied the impact of land use intensity should have been investigated, though no related analysis was reported. The methodology and results section required thorough revision mostly by adding new experiments and analysis to make the manuscript richer in content as an academic manuscript. Therefore, the authors should investigate urbanization over the study period and investigate the relationship between phenology parameters and land use intensity. Considering only the temperature as a measure of land use intensity is not enough for an original research paper.

☞ We revised our manuscript by accepting reviewer’s advice.

7- How did you determine suitable pixels of MODIS EVI for your analysis? The MODIS EVI data, at their best, has 250 m spatial resolution, and according to Figure 1, some point-based sites were collected for the analysis. How did you ensure that the MODIS EVI pixels only include one land cover type, e.g., Q. mongolica? These uncertainties should be explicitly explained with proper illustrations to reduce the ambiguity and uncertainty of the results.

☞ We added the following to our manuscript by reflecting reviewer's valuable comments: To compensate for the resolution of large-scale MODIS satellite images, the mountain with a high occupancy ratio of Mongolian oak forest among the mountains in Seoul was selected as the study site. The study sites shown on the map represent the place where the widest Mongolian oak community is located within the selected mountain.

8- The authors should extract the three phenology parameters of SOS, EOS, and GSL for comparison. This is necessary to make the manuscript and the results section more exhaustive. The impact of land use intensity and temperature on SOS, EOS, and GSL of the three considered tree types should be investigated explicitly/separately.

☞ Because those factors do not show as clear changes as the green-up date we focused on the green-up date.

9- Please include new Figures and illustrate the spatial distribution of phenology parameters and the land use intensity to better convey the message of the manuscript.

☞ We revised our manuscript by adding new figure (Figure 2), which shows land use pattern. The spatial distribution of phenology was shown in Figure 4.

10- The discussion section requires modifications. First, several sentences in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 are redundant/repetitive and do not directly relate to the manuscript and repetitive. Furthermore, the authors should mention the limitations of their work.

☞ We revised our manuscript by accepting reviewer’s advice.

Lines 419-433(add), 457-485(delete), 511-531(add)

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript analyzed the impacts of urbanization on plant phenology. The topic is interesting. But lacking details in methods and results make it weak in supporting the conclusion.

First, I believe a lot of studies have stressed the heat island impacts on plant phenology in urban areas. However, in the introduction, I didn't see a good summary of previous studies. Second, the methods were too simple to understand what the authors really did.

Specific comments:

(1) In table 1, the authors listed 2 kinds of maps. If I understand correctly, the two maps show the urbanization conditions in 2008 and 2020, separately. The authors said they collected phenology data in 2016-2021. How did the authors calculate the urbanization ratios in each year of 2016-2021? Did the authors collect the phenology data for every year in 2016-2021 at all the sites on Figure 1?

(2) Figure 1, please shrink the map on the left which are less important and enlarge the images and numeric labels on the right.

(3) The authors described the methods in using satellite images. However, I didn't see any analysis in using them. Or do I misunderstand the results? Based on my understanding, the authors only used the field data in the results part.

(4) How was the EWMA calculated? What was the window size to calculate the average? From the formula (5), I didn't see the average was calculated.

(5) Please describe the details about how the field data was collected. How was the flowing and leaf phenology identified. Especially for the red pine which is evergreen species, how was the leaf unfold defined? How was the abnormal shoot defined?

(6) The authors collected temperature data in 1997-2021. Did the authors used the averaged temperature in analysis or use the specific year in which field data were collected?

(7) In the section 3.2, what would the authors like to express in analyzing the phenological correlation between different species? The are the correlation values listed in Table 2? Between which two species?

(8) Figure 3, please enlarge the legend labels on the right sub-plots. The layout of the figure is bad.

(9) Figure 4, What data was used to cluster different areas (black lines)? Please remove the numeric labels and only leave the DoY. It is better to put a background map showing the urban and outskirts areas.

(10) Figure 5, how about cherry and red pine? Only Q. mongolica shows this pattern?

Author Response

Response to Reviewers' comments

 

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you for reviewers’ valuable advice and comments. We answered faithfully to reviewers’ questions and revised our manuscript be reflecting reviewers’ valuable advice and comments.

Thank you again for reviewers’ kind advice and comments.

Sincerely Yours,

Chang Seok Lee

Reviewer #3

 

This manuscript analyzed the impacts of urbanization on plant phenology. The topic is interesting. But lacking details in methods and results make it weak in supporting the conclusion.

First, I believe a lot of studies have stressed the heat island impacts on plant phenology in urban areas. However, in the introduction, I didn't see a good summary of previous studies. Second, the methods were too simple to understand what the authors really did.

☞ We reinforced Introduction section by reflecting reviewer’s comment.

Lines 71-100 (add), 101-115 (delete), 116-130 (add)

☞ We addressed analysis of phenology based on satellite image, Calculation of vegetation index, flowering of cherry, abnormal growth of Korean red pine, collection and analysis of meteorological data, and statistical analysis and mapping, which required for this study in Method section. Lines 194-261.

Specific comments:

(1) In table 1, the authors listed 2 kinds of maps. If I understand correctly, the two maps show the urbanization conditions in 2008 and 2020, separately. The authors said they collected phenology data in 2016-2021. How did the authors calculate the urbanization ratios in each year of 2016-2021? Did the authors collect the phenology data for every year in 2016-2021 at all the sites on Figure 1?

☞ We calculated the urbanization rate based on the Biotop map, which is

prepared by supplementing the land use map through the field check. As Seoul is an old city, the urbanization rate does not change rapidly, so we used the urbanization rate obtained from the Biotop map created in 2021. Flowering of cherry, abnormal growth of Korean red pine, and leaf phenology of Mongolian oak were investigated in 2016, 2018, and 2021, respectively.

(2) Figure 1, please shrink the map on the left which are less important and enlarge the images and numeric labels on the right.

☞ We revised Figure 1 by reflecting reviewer’s comment.

(3) The authors described the methods in using satellite images. However, I didn't see any analysis in using them. Or do I misunderstand the results? Based on my understanding, the authors only used the field data in the results part.

☞ We obtained the vegetation index by analyzing satellite images and obtained curve K by analyzing its change curve to reveal the time when the change occurred.

(4) How was the EWMA calculated? What was the window size to calculate the average? From the formula (5), I didn't see the average was calculated.

☞ The weighted moving average was not calculated over the surface values of the EVI raster data and did not use a moving window. The average was used as a way to interpolate outliers due to rain, fog, etc. from the daily EVI values extracted from each of the Sourwood survey points. An excel program was utilized to calculate the average.

(5) Please describe the details about how the field data was collected. How was the flowing and leaf phenology identified. Especially for the red pine which is evergreen species, how was the leaf unfold defined? How was the abnormal shoot defined?

☞ We explained survey methods for flowering of cherry and abnormal growth of Korean red pine in Method section. Lines 236-252.

We defined abnormal shoot as the follows.

In early summer, as the day length begins to decline, shoot elongation is suspended and overwintering buds begin to form in most temperate woody plants, including the Korean red pine (Pinus densiflora). The growth of overwintering buds occurs as the temperature and day length increase in spring and is referred to as “predetermined growth”. “Lammas growth” or “free growth” are shoots that form after a pause in summer growth. Lammas growth in Korean red pine occurred from late summer through fall and into winter and thus showed different characteristics from typical Lammas growth. We therefore identified this specific phenological event as “abnormal growth” due to climate change.

(6) The authors collected temperature data in 1997-2021. Did the authors used the averaged temperature in analysis or use the specific year in which field data were collected?

☞ We used averaged temperature.

(7) In the section 3.2, what would the authors like to express in analyzing the phenological correlation between different species? The are the correlation values listed in Table 2? Between which two species?

☞ We analyzed the correlation between the green-up date, the flowering date of cherry, and the occurrence frequency and length of abnormal shoots of Korean red pine. So, the number represents the correlation coefficient. Through this data, we tried to show that the phenology phenomena in plants has a common reaction.

(8) Figure 3, please enlarge the legend labels on the right sub-plots. The layout of the figure is bad.

☞ We revised the Figure to increase the resolution

(9) Figure 4, What data was used to cluster different areas (black lines)? Please remove the numeric labels and only leave the DoY. It is better to put a background map showing the urban and outskirts areas.

☞ They are isopleth line of DoY. We revised the maps by removing the numeric labels. Urban and outskirts are qualitative categories, making it difficult to clearly distinguish the boundaries.

(10) Figure 5, how about cherry and red pine? Only Q. mongolica shows this pattern?

☞ In this paper, we focused on the phenology of Q. mongolica, and the phenology data of cherry and Korean red pine were used to reinforce this. This Figure was created with data obtained from Mongolian oak.
The other two plants showed similar reactions. It can be confirmed from the correlation of phenology events of the plants described above. The remaining data will be covered in the next paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I appreciate the authors' efforts in addressing most of the comments in the previous round. The manuscript has been improved accordingly, though further improvements are necessary to make the manuscript more exhaustive and suitable for publication.

1- The citation style in lines 87 and 90 should be corrected.

2- Did you use only a single-year land use map? How did you measure the urban intensity using only one land use map? The changes of urban density should have been calculated using time-series of land use map.

3- As the title implied, the impact of land use intensity should have been investigated, though no related analysis was reported. The methodology and results section required thorough revision, mostly by adding new experiments and analysis to make the manuscript richer in content as an academic manuscript. Therefore, the authors should investigate urbanization over the study period and investigate the relationship between phenology parameters and land use intensity. Considering only the temperature as a measure of land use intensity is not enough for an original research paper. Please also include the time series of land use intensity over the study area.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you for reviewers’ valuable advice and comments. We answered faithfully to reviewers’ questions and revised our manuscript by reflecting reviewers’ valuable advice and comments.

Thank you again for reviewers’ kind advice and comments.

Sincerely Yours,

Chang Seok Lee

 

Reviewer #2

I appreciate the authors' efforts in addressing most of the comments in the previous round. The manuscript has been improved accordingly, though further improvements are necessary to make the manuscript more exhaustive and suitable for publication.

1- The citation style in lines 87 and 90 should be corrected.

☞ It is our mistake. We revised the part.

2- Did you use only a single-year land use map? How did you measure the urban intensity using only one land use map? The changes of urban density should have been calculated using time-series of land use map.

☞ Yes, we used only a single-year biotope map. We calculated the urbanization rate based on the Biotop map, which is prepared by supplementing the land use map through the field check. As Seoul is an old city, the urbanization rate does not change rapidly, so we used the urbanization rate obtained from the Biotop map created in 2021.

3- As the title implied, the impact of land use intensity should have been investigated, though no related analysis was reported. The methodology and results section required thorough revision, mostly by adding new experiments and analysis to make the manuscript richer in content as an academic manuscript. Therefore, the authors should investigate urbanization over the study period and investigate the relationship between phenology parameters and land use intensity. Considering only the temperature as a measure of land use intensity is not enough for an original research paper. Please also include the time series of land use intensity over the study area.

☞ Yes, we interpreted the impact of land use intensity by analyzing the relationships between urbanization rate, air temperature, and green-up date of Q. mongolica.

As mentioned earlier, Seoul is an old city, and the population continued to increase until the 1990s, but since then, the urbanized area has not changed significantly as the population has stagnated or decreased. Therefore, the calculation of the urbanization rate based on the biotop map created in 2021 in this study is not considered to be a problem as data to analyze the response of phenology to the degree of urbanization.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I was disappointed to see rare improvement was made after the revision. I thought the authors would describe more details in the methods and display more results to support  their conclusions. But they didn't. Especially for those methods I questioned. The authors simply responded my question and didn't made any improvement in the manuscript. I would like to decline this manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you for reviewers’ valuable advice and comments. We answered faithfully to reviewers’ questions and revised our manuscript by reflecting reviewers’ valuable advice and comments.

Thank you again for reviewers’ kind advice and comments.

Sincerely Yours,

Chang Seok Lee

Reviewer #3

 

I was disappointed to see rare improvement was made after the revision. I thought the authors would describe more details in the methods and display more results to support their conclusions. But they didn't. Especially for those methods I questioned. The authors simply responded my question and didn't made any improvement in the manuscript. I would like to decline this manuscript.

☞ We added the method of calculating the urbanization rate, which was omitted from the method.

☞ In conclusion, we defined the urban heat island phenomenon as a local climate change. The content was proved by the difference in average temperature of 5 ℃ between the urban center and the outskirts of the city, which is a big difference corresponding to 5 degrees in latitude.

We also concluded that the phenology expressed by plants well reflects microclimate changes resulting from urbanization. We demonstrated this through the leaf unfolding of Mongolian Oak and the abnormal shoot growth of Korean red pine, two species representing forest vegetation in Korea, and the flowering of cherry, known as a representative spring flower plant in East Asia. Furthermore, this was reinforced through the close correlation between the phenology shown in these three plants.

Furthermore, we concluded that sustainable development of cities is required to solve these problems and further prevent their impact from spreading beyond the city. To draw this conclusion, we discussed that ecosystem management, such as the conservation of existing nature, and restoration of damaged nature can contribute to mitigating climate change and further, contribute to the sustainable development of the city.

 

 

 

☞ In addition, we faithfully revised our manuscript by reflecting reviewer's advice and comments and responded to the reviewer's questions as follows.

 

This manuscript analyzed the impacts of urbanization on plant phenology. The topic is interesting. But lacking details in methods and results make it weak in supporting the conclusion.

First, I believe a lot of studies have stressed the heat island impacts on plant phenology in urban areas. However, in the introduction, I didn't see a good summary of previous studies. Second, the methods were too simple to understand what the authors really did.

☞ We reinforced Introduction section by reflecting reviewer’s comment.

Lines 71-100 (add), 101-115 (delete), 116-130 (add)

☞ We addressed analysis of phenology based on satellite image, Calculation of vegetation index, flowering of cherry, abnormal growth of Korean red pine, collection and analysis of meteorological data, and statistical analysis and mapping, which required for this study in Method section. Lines 194-261.

Specific comments:

(1) In table 1, the authors listed 2 kinds of maps. If I understand correctly, the two maps show the urbanization conditions in 2008 and 2020, separately. The authors said they collected phenology data in 2016-2021. How did the authors calculate the urbanization ratios in each year of 2016-2021? Did the authors collect the phenology data for every year in 2016-2021 at all the sites on Figure 1?

☞ We calculated the urbanization rate based on the Biotop map, which is

prepared by supplementing the land use map through the field check. As Seoul is an old city, the urbanization rate does not change rapidly, so we used the urbanization rate obtained from the Biotop map created in 2021. Flowering of cherry, abnormal growth of Korean red pine, and leaf phenology of Mongolian oak were investigated in 2016, 2018, and 2021, respectively.

(2) Figure 1, please shrink the map on the left which are less important and enlarge the images and numeric labels on the right.

☞ We revised Figure 1 by reflecting reviewer’s comment.

(3) The authors described the methods in using satellite images. However, I didn't see any analysis in using them. Or do I misunderstand the results? Based on my understanding, the authors only used the field data in the results part.

☞ We obtained the vegetation index by analyzing satellite images and obtained curve K by analyzing its change curve to reveal the time when the change occurred.

(4) How was the EWMA calculated? What was the window size to calculate the average? From the formula (5), I didn't see the average was calculated.

☞ The weighted moving average was not calculated over the surface values of the EVI raster data and did not use a moving window. The average was used as a way to interpolate outliers due to rain, fog, etc. from the daily EVI values extracted from each of the survey points. An excel program was utilized to calculate the average.

(5) Please describe the details about how the field data was collected. How was the flowing and leaf phenology identified. Especially for the red pine which is evergreen species, how was the leaf unfold defined? How was the abnormal shoot defined?

☞ We explained survey methods for flowering of cherry and abnormal growth of Korean red pine in Method section. Lines 236-252.

We defined abnormal shoot as the follows.

In early summer, as the day length begins to decline, shoot elongation is suspended and overwintering buds begin to form in most temperate woody plants, including the Korean red pine (Pinus densiflora). The growth of overwintering buds occurs as the temperature and day length increase in spring and is referred to as “predetermined growth”. “Lammas growth” or “free growth” are shoots that form after a pause in summer growth. Lammas growth in Korean red pine occurred from late summer through fall and into winter and thus showed different characteristics from typical Lammas growth. We therefore identified this specific phenological event as “abnormal growth” due to climate change.

(6) The authors collected temperature data in 1997-2021. Did the authors used the averaged temperature in analysis or use the specific year in which field data were collected?

☞ We used averaged temperature.

(7) In the section 3.2, what would the authors like to express in analyzing the phenological correlation between different species? The are the correlation values listed in Table 2? Between which two species?

☞ We analyzed the correlation between the green-up date, the flowering date of cherry, and the occurrence frequency and length of abnormal shoots of Korean red pine. So, the number represents the correlation coefficient. Through this data, we tried to show that the phenology phenomena in plants has a common reaction.

(8) Figure 3, please enlarge the legend labels on the right sub-plots. The layout of the figure is bad.

☞ We revised the Figure to increase the resolution

(9) Figure 4, What data was used to cluster different areas (black lines)? Please remove the numeric labels and only leave the DoY. It is better to put a background map showing the urban and outskirts areas.

☞ They are isopleth line of DoY. We revised the maps by removing the numeric labels. Urban and outskirts are qualitative categories, making it difficult to clearly distinguish the boundaries.

(10) Figure 5, how about cherry and red pine? Only Q. mongolica shows this pattern?

☞ In this paper, we focused on the phenology of Q. mongolica, and the phenology data of cherry and Korean red pine were used to reinforce this. This Figure was created with data obtained from Mongolian oak.
The other two plants showed similar reactions. It can be confirmed from the correlation of phenology events of the plants described above. The remaining data will be covered in the next paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf