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Article
Peer-Review Record

Old-Growth Forests in Urban Nature Reserves: Balancing Risks for Visitors and Biodiversity Protection in Warsaw, Poland

by Andrzej Długoński 1, Thilo Wellmann 2,* and Dagmar Haase 2,3
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Reviewer 3:
Submission received: 30 November 2022 / Revised: 10 January 2023 / Accepted: 16 January 2023 / Published: 18 January 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Progress in Urban Forest Planning and Monitoring)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I have carefully reviewed the article about detecting the weakest trees in the BielaÅ„ski forest and the Kabacki forest via airborne laser scanning data. The study aimed to check the prediction power of the weakest trees (defoliated trees) and monitoring of forest areas via ALS. The data were presented in detail with tables and figs. The text was written concisely and briefly. The main problem of the articles is some parts need to condense indicated in the introduction. The title should be rearranged and condensed for reader. Besides, there are some figures that should be considered in the appendix due to repetition. After these minor revisions, the article should be worthy to publication in the journal Land.

Best regards,

   

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for careful and thorough reading of our manuscript and for the thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions, which help to improve the quality of this manuscript. We revised our manuscript accordingly and made additions in track-changes. Our response to each point follows:

 

Point 1: “Dear Authors. I have carefully reviewed the article about detecting the weakest trees in the BielaÅ„ski forest and the Kabacki forest via airborne laser scanning data. The study aimed to check the prediction power of the weakest trees (defoliated trees) and monitoring of forest areas via ALS. The data were presented in detail with tables and figs. The text was written concisely and briefly. The main problem of the articles is some parts need to condense indicated in the introduction. The title should be rearranged and condensed for reader. Besides, there are some figures that should be considered in the appendix due to repetition. After these minor revisions, the article should be worthy to publication in the journal Land.”

 

Response 1: Thank you for your positive feedback.  We modified introduction chapter (including a minor correction of the research questions) to better showing of research problem presented in the paper. We also rearrange and condense the title of the manuscript to be better understand for reader. However, after consideration we decide to show most of presented figures (1-9) and table 1 in the main text. Firstly, table 1 is a synthetic addition to the information on all and defoliated trees in both case study forest reserves. Secondly, the figures illustrate the issues discussed in the text regarding the problems with weak trees in the background of describing their health state as well as present maps with distribution of defoliated tree species or ideas/examples that broaden the discussion chapter. Moreover, we decide to delete Figures 10-12 and to add Table 2 and a new Figure 10 instead illustrating better the results and the usage of our studies.

 

All other changes regarding the presentation of results are incorporated directly into the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall comments

This study aimed to determine whether ALS data can confirm that the weakest trees suffer the worst crown defoliation as the first eruptions and breakthroughs in storms in urban nature reserves. The topic is interesting and the research questions and hypotheses are well identified. Please find below for further comments.

 

Detailed comments

1. It is recommended to have a section of literature review to systematically summarized the progress and gaps in this specific field. The current review in the introduction (from Line 45 to Line 67) seems insufficient.

 

2. It is recommended to further explain how the findings of this study can be applied to other similar studies.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for careful and thorough reading of our manuscript and for the thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions, which help to improve the quality of this manuscript. We revised our manuscript accordingly and made additions in track-changes. Our response to each point follows:

 

Point 1: “Overall comments. This study aimed to determine whether ALS data can confirm that the weakest trees suffer the worst crown defoliation as the first eruptions and breakthroughs in storms in urban nature reserves. The topic is interesting and the research questions and hypotheses are well identified. Please find below for further comments”

 

Response 1: Thank you for your positive feedback.

 

 

Point 2: “Detailed comments 1. It is recommended to have a section of literature review to systematically summarized the progress and gaps in this specific field. The current review in the introduction (from Line 45 to Line 67) seems insufficient."

 

Response 2: Thank you for your valuable insight. In the new version of the manuscript, we enrich the literature review and further highlighted the gap in forest and remote sensing research in Poland dependent on the parameters of the data acquisition.

 

Point 3: “2. It is recommended to further explain how the findings of this study can be applied to other similar studies:”

 

Response 3: Thank you for your valuable insight. In the new version of the manuscript, we enrich our findings to other similar studies stronger.

 

All other changes regarding to introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references, as well as presentation of results, discussion and conclusion are incorporated directly into the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Title: Endangered forest stocks in urban nature reserves. Balancing risks for visitors and biodiversity protection of old forest reserves by LiDAR High Structural Diversity Tree Crown Mapping in Warsaw, Poland.

The paper presents the results of airborne laser scanning (ALS) research from 2018 and 2020, and field observations were carried out in 2022. The observation was carried out by a group of students, which gives a potentially large error of evaluation differentiation. The assessment of this error is not presented in the paper.

The authors mention the vegetation index (NDVI) (tables S1, S2 do not contain this index), but do not present its measurement. They refer to archival measurements from more than two years ago, comparing them with field research this year. The NDVI data cited by the authors are also available: https://mapy.geoportal.gov.pl/imap/Imgp_2.html?gpmap=gp0&locale=en 

The size of a single pixel of data from the Sentinel-2 satellite recorded in 2020 is 10 meters. Based on such data, it is not possible to identify a single tree (Tab S1, S1). The research was wrongly planned and performed. This does not allow to objectively and reliably verify the hypotheses.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for careful and thorough reading of our manuscript and for the thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions, which help to improve the quality of this manuscript. We revised our manuscript accordingly and made additions in track-changes. Our response to each point follows:

 

Point 1: “Title: Endangered forest stocks in urban nature reserves. Balancing risks for visitors and biodiversity protection of old forest reserves by LiDAR High Structural Diversity Tree Crown Mapping in Warsaw, Poland. The paper presents the results of airborne laser scanning (ALS) research from 2018 and 2020, and field observations were carried out in 2022. The observation was carried out by a group of students, which gives a potentially large error of evaluation differentiation. The assessment of this error is not presented in the paper.”

 

Response 1: We thank you for this valuable comment. Below we present explanation of the time differences in data acquisition of our research. Firstly, from the information obtained from the Warsaw municipal office, the ALS data was collected by a remote sensing company according to this company work schedule. The implementation time of the task was time-consuming and took place during the period 2018 - 2020 due to:

-             Size of the area (a large area of Warsaw city with area of 517.2 km²required the division of ALS into phases falling into different years),

-             Favorable weather conditions (sunny weather, spring-summer period with fully formed tree leaves were required during the raid).

Secondly, it was not possible to conduct a field visit with landscape architecture students in 2018-20 period due to:

- Corona (restrictions and social isolation and further management of the university authorities (student participation in research, requirements of the university's educational quality committee and the audit committee in Poland),

- incomplete ALS database. The database was possible to make available to the authors only after it was collected and comprehensively processed by a team of specialists and handed over to the Warsaw municipal office (February 2021).

Due to these facts, the field study and evaluation of the defoliated trees selected by ALS took place in August 2022 during the workshop. The student workshops were supervised by authors and university staff specializing in landscape architecture, forestry and dendrology field.

The surveys were done after the windstorm passed in February 2022, hence checking the weakest trees in the field earlier (before 2022) was unwarranted. We would like to note that the correctness of the ALS method was field-tested by specialists during the tree crown map study in period of 2018-2020.

The methodology of our research and the aforementioned issues have been further emphasized and clarified in the text of the work so that it does not raise further objections as well as uncertainties.

 

 

 

 

Point 2: “The authors mention the vegetation index (NDVI) (tables S1, S2 do not contain this index), but do not present its measurement. They refer to archival measurements from more than two years ago, comparing them with field research this year. The NDVI data cited by the authors are also available: https://mapy.geoportal.gov.pl/imap/Imgp_2.html?gpmap=gp0&locale=en

 

Response 2: We thank you for this valuable comments. Firstly, in some studies (also in articles on tree maps for Warsaw) the NDVI index is represented also by defoliation of leaves. However, we have decided to make this indicator more precise (after a correction in the paper, we now only refer to leaf defoliation with omitted the NDVI index) so that there are no further inaccuracies.

 

Secondly, we would like to note that the data presented in the manuscript are not archival but are current and recent. The data was collected by the authors of this study over a period of two years and shared in February 2021. Due to constraints/ limitations (Corona period and the storm in February 2022), the field visit took place in August 2022 (see response 1). Based on the monitoring of the environment of the forests of Warsaw (General Directorate of Environmental Protection, pl. GDOÅš) and the imposition of principled protection of these sites, the state of trees location and diversity of the forests did not change, until the Eunice windstorm of 2022, which is still strongly emphasized in the text of the manuscript.

Moreover, we would disagree with the reviewer's statement that the NDVI data for Warsaw cited by authors is also available: https://mapy.geoportal.gov.pl/imap/Imgp_2.html?gpmap=gp0&locale=en, since the data presented in the paper are not shown there. In the manuscript, we present data by using ALS. The aforementioned website presents the data using satellite imagery (Sentinel-2) or actual or archival orthofotomap, other thematic maps as solar maps with trees distribution (since November 2022), which we do not refer to in our research. The ALS map that we use in the study is also available (an overview version) at the following link:

https://mapa.um.warszawa.pl/mapaApp1/mapa?service=zielen&L=en&X=7502805.127594725&Y=5788955.369500488&S=9&O=0&T=3c1f78fe004ffffffffffffffff800003060c00003bbbbbf000018000000x4F&komunikat=off

This online source of this map we added to our revised paper. We include all these important issues affecting the presentation of the manuscript directly in the text, adding applied explanations and a broader discussion of the issue.

 

Point 3: “The size of a single pixel of data from the Sentinel-2 satellite recorded in 2020 is 10 meters. Based on such data, it is not possible to identify a single tree (Tab S1, S1). The research was wrongly planned and performed. This does not allow to objectively and reliably verify the hypotheses”.

 

 

Response 3: We guess that the reviewer's remark about the impossibility of verifying a single tree using Sentinel-2 from a height of 10 meters is due to the erroneous naming of two different maps by a single name – Tree Crown Map (pl. Mapa koron drzew). Below we present more extensive explanation of this important issue. The first map (Sentinel-2 map) known as national tree crown map/ tree map for Poland (pl. "Krajowa mapa drzew" or "Mapa koron drzew") was made using Sentinel-2 and is about the distribution and heights of trees for the whole of Poland obtained from open satellite data from 2020. From these data, it is not possible to identify individual trees as the reviewer rightly points out. The second map (ALS map) known as tree crown map (pl. “Mapa koron drzew” or “Mapa koron drzew Warszawy”) was made using the ALS method and concerns the distribution, species diversity and health condition of trees based on a manned aircraft raid carried out in Warsaw in 2018-2020. The purpose of this study was to inventory the city's trees by using ALS. The spatial data for this map was made available to us by the municipality of Warsaw city - GIS files with attribute tables containing data such as species names, defoliation, GPS coordinates, and tree heights etc. The multispectral resolution of the data was 0.1 m. This data makes it possible to identify individual trees in the field.

Information on the presented second map for Warsaw (ALS) and the modification of its title is more extensively and accurately described in the revised manuscript along with the literature. In addition, the specification of the data coverage and data acquisition methods for the map for Warsaw (ALS) is available at the links:

https://www.mggpaero.com/artykuly/31-teledetekcja-nowe-perspektywy-w-zarzadzania-zielenia.pdf

https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/baztech/element/bwmeta1.element.baztech-23ebd84d-d67c-46c9-a37a-133f4ceba201

https://yadda.icm.edu.pl/baztech/element/bwmeta1.element.baztech-aec79500-506a-49fa-bb34-8d3541b01fba

Finally, in our opinion, due to the similar and confusing names of these two maps, we made a slight modification one of its names in revised article. Currently, after modification by us, the name of the first map (Sentinel-2) is “National Tree Crown Map for Poland” and second map (ALS map) is "High Structural Diversity Tree Crown Map for Warsaw".

All other changes regarding the presentation of results, discussion and conclusions are incorporated directly into the text.

We also set and deep better the methodology, clarify the results regarding the asked research questions and highlight the study limitations according to reviewer and editors suggestions.

 

In terms of language, the text of the manuscript is subjected to intensive linguistic proofreading by a native speaker. The office provides a guarantee on the quality of the text editing.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Title: Endangered forest stocks in urban nature reserves. Balancing risks for visitors and biodiversity protection of old forest reserves by LiDAR High Structural Diversity Tree Crown Mapping in Warsaw, Poland

changed to: Old-growth forests in urban nature reserves: Balancing risks for visitors and biodiversity protection in Warsaw, Poland

corresponds to the changes made to the text after round 1.

Very broad changes introduced by the authors better present the scope of research. The responses to the review explain the inaccuracies described in it.

 

Adding an introduction, literature review, methodology and discussion increases the readability of the article.

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