Patch Burning Improves Nutritional Quality of Two Gulf Coast Grasses—And Winter Burning Is Better than Summer Burning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General Comments:

Interesting and well structured manuscript regarding the nutritional values of two warm season grasses after burning. The main comments are regarding the use of the control treatment and the recovery compared to unburnt vegetation, as it is unclear from the manuscript.

Firstly, it is stated in line 110 that non-burnt controls were used as one of the treatments. How where these control areas used in the study? This needs to be clarified.

Secondly, although the nutrient profiles for the two grasses changed over time since the burning event it is uncertain how the nutrient profiles compare to unburnt vegetation of the same period. To what extent does CP and NDF vary over the season in unburnt vegetation?

Thirdly, following in the same line of thought, when does the burnt vegetation ‘recover’ and reach pre-burnt levels of CP and NDF, and does it vary based on the season of burning and between the species?

Figures and Tables:

1.     Figure 2. The figure should specify which type of linear model is represented in each figure (0, 1 or 2 thresholds etc.). Additionally, it is not clear from the figure what the grey area in (a) and (b) is representing. The figure would also benefit of having confidence intervals of the shown model predictions.

Author Response

We appreciate this reviewer's attention to detail.  This reviewer's suggestions greatly improved the manuscript.  Please see the attachment for specific responses.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Congratulations for the excelent research!

Author Response

We appreciate this reviewer's time in reviewing our manuscript, and we thank the reviewer for the compliment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The ms fire-2239855 with the title of Patch Burning Improves Nutritional Quality of Two Gulf Coast Grasses—And Winter Burning is Better than Summer Burning is well organized and can be accepted after minor revision:

 Can you please add some values as key results in the abstract?

L39 remove the space between ° and C

In second paragraph, L 43, the authors should add one sentence about the salinity negative effect before the Gulf cordgrass is well adapted to soils high in salinity. They can cite this ref: https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10081657, https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.618092 and https://doi: 10.1016/j.sjbs.2014.12.001.
 

L61-72 please cite this text.

At end of the introduction: I prefer the author to present first the aims and then can place the hypothesis at the end.

In section 2.2.1. Forage Chemical Analyses: The authors should add additional details on how they have conducted the different analyses such as sample weight, the chemical used, etc.

3.3. Gulf Cordgrass CP and next sections in results section: It is terrible and I suggest the authors to reduce the presenting values in the text, so the readers can follow your writing.

In addition, I prefer the authors not to present the standard error or the standard deviation from the text or at reduce its using.

Discussion was well written

Conclusion: remove first sentence, it should be in material and methods or introduction.

L465-469 revise this part and please avoid using references in conclusion section.

References: please follow the guidelines of the journal for writing the references.

Regards

Reviewer

 

Author Response

We appreciate the time and energy this reviewer made to improving our manuscript.  Please see the attachment for responses to specific comments and suggestions.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf