Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General information and major remarks

The manuscript entitled with “Arctic greening caused by warming contributes to compositional changes of mycobiota at the Polar Urals” by Anton Shiryaev et al addresses important research questions about how climate warming is changing vegetation cover and mycobiota of the Arctic, with a focus on treeline to boreal forests of the Polar Urals.

With their study, they present new findings that add to a long-term observation, which covers now the last 60 years. From these valuable data in combination with a remote sensing approach, they infer dramatic responses of the tundra-taiga ecotone – vegetation cover and forest stand density increases, forest-tundra is replacing treeless tundra, the dominant forest species change, and mycobiota species’ composition follows the environmental changes. The authors manage to combine the complex data from individual trees and fungi species to regional scale remote sensing data. With this, they could deduct ecosystem-scale responses.

The manuscript is well structured and I could understand the majority of the text, but at some places, language errors and not well-structured sentences make it hard to read. Therefore, I think that intensive English editing will greatly improve the readability of the manuscript.

I have concerns with the reproducibility of their analyses. Especially the methods section 2.3 (studies of NDVI and vegetation cover; Line 166 ff.) needs additional work. It remains widely open, how the authors processed the satellite images. All relevant information must be provided for reproducibility of the derived results, i.e. the used software, processing steps and data. This is needed for all three main products of this study, the NDVI change maps, the vegetation classification, and the closeness calculation. See also the detailed comments regarding this section in the list below.

In addition, I did not find a statement where their produced data is available. For example in section 2.4. (data sampling and processing for dendrochronological studies; Line 210 ff.), the newly produced tree ring width series cannot be found in the supplementary material nor uploaded online (e.g. to the ITRD). In my opinion, this should be “good scientific practice” and the authors should provide all of their used data for reproducibility (see above), or if restrictions apply, state why the data cannot be publicly shared.

Detailed comments

Main text

Line 21: “indicators species” please change to “indicator species”

Line 30: “average temperatures have grown globally” please change to “average temperatures have increased globally”

Line 32: Please correct the statements of temperature values here and in the manuscript at multiple places (e.g. Line 645, 646) by adding a blank space between the value and dimension, e.g. “0.6 °C”

Line 33-36: The content needs a reference.

Line 33: Please replace the beginning of the sentence “Earth-derived …” with “At a global scale, ...”

Line 42-43: Please change “Woody vegetation on the limit” to “Woody vegetation at the limit”

Line 43-45: This sentence gives only one side of the story “… recent recruitment beyond historical treeline limits is consistent with observed rates of recent warming [5,11,12].“, as recruitment at some sites is indeed following the warming climate, but consider also that treeline positions at various places worldwide are not uniformly advancing. See e.g. Harsch et al (2009) for a review of treeline responses and Kruse et al (2019) for a case study in North-Central Siberia, which suggests that latitudinal treeline advance rates strongly lag behind warming temperatures.

Harsch, M. A., Hulme, P. E., McGlone, M. S. and Duncan, R. P.: Are treelines advancing? A global meta-analysis of treeline response to climate warming, Ecol. Lett., 12(10), 1040–1049, doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01355.x, 2009.

Kruse, S., Gerdes, A., Kath, N. J., Epp, L. S., Stoof-Leichsenring, K. R., Pestryakova, L. A. and Herzschuh, U.: Dispersal distances and migration rates at the arctic treeline in Siberia – a genetic and simulation-based study, Biogeosciences, 16(6), 1211–1224, doi:10.5194/bg-16-1211-2019, 2019.

Line 59: There might be a word missing e.g. "the raised cover of shrubs” rather than “the raised of shrubs”

Line 61-63: Consider including recent publication of Biskaborn et al (2019) about warming permafrost in this sentence.

Biskaborn, B. K., Smith, S. L., Noetzli, J., Matthes, H., Vieira, G., Streletskiy, D. A., Schoeneich, P., Romanovsky, V. E., Lewkowicz, A. G., Abramov, A., Allard, M., Boike, J., Cable, W. L., Christiansen, H. H., Delaloye, R., Diekmann, B., Drozdov, D., Etzelmüller, B., Grosse, G., Guglielmin, M., Ingeman-Nielsen, T., Isaksen, K., Ishikawa, M., Johansson, M., Johannsson, H., Joo, A., Kaverin, D., Kholodov, A., Konstantinov, P., Kröger, T., Lambiel, C., Lanckman, J. P., Luo, D., Malkova, G., Meiklejohn, I., Moskalenko, N., Oliva, M., Phillips, M., Ramos, M., Sannel, A. B. K., Sergeev, D., Seybold, C., Skryabin, P., Vasiliev, A., Wu, Q., Yoshikawa, K., Zheleznyak, M. and Lantuit, H.: Permafrost is warming at a global scale, Nat. Commun., 10(1), 1–11, doi:10.1038/s41467-018-08240-4, 2019.

Line 66: I think the authors mean "fungi" or "fungal biota" or "mycobiota" instead of “Funga”?

Line 75-79: Long sentence, the authors may think about rewording for better understanding.

Line 79-81: Please add references to those regions with long-term monitoring.

Line 100: The authors use at other places in the manuscript, e.g. in the Results and discussion section, the term "northern taiga". Please check if they mean with this "north-taiga" the same and please consistently use the chosen term.

Line 107: What does the authors mean with "treeline level", maybe "treeline position"?

Figure 1:Letter A and B are not fully visible in the two plots.
Mountain ranges in plot B named "Rai-Is" please change to the used reference as in the text "Rai-Iz".
Use "Slansevaya and Rai-Iz mountains" rather than "... Mounts" in the caption, or move "Mounts" before the names.
“Sob' river” Please remove the apostrophe.
Please reword "model plot for NDVI studies" to e.g. "region of analyses for ..." or "study area..." for better understanding.
The coordinate labels at the borders appear to be cutted on the right side of plot A. Please consider removing the minute and degree values as they are not adding information, and increase the size for readability.
Furthermore, please consider decreasing the thick line of the border of plot A to match the line width used in plot B.
Please consider increasing the font size of the colorbar legend for the elevation in plot B.
Please add the source for the elevation data in plot B. Are the authors using the “ArcticDEM” as referred to in the text?

Line 125: Please consistently use one of the terms "research area" or "study area" in the text.

Figure 2: Please add a degree sign to the left y-axis label "Temperature, °C".

Line 133: In Figure 2 the authors present data of a longer period from 1892 until 2018. To which "65-year observation period" refer the authors here? Please clarify.

Line 137: Please reword, because the authors cannot exclude any "anthropogenic impact". Indeed, there might be some impact from reindeer herding, as also the authors state in the second part of the sentence.

Line 139: Please consider the use of people living in an area per kilometer square as dimension for population density.

At least, format the dimensions here and in the following as "ha/individuals"

Line 148: Please delete the misplaced word “in” in “in with different modifications”

Line 152: Please use the word "rate" here instead of "speed"

Line 154: Please move "for evaluating the weight reduction" from the brackets to the end of the sentence after "... were taken out for evaluating the weight reduction "

Line 163-164: It remains unclear where the authors probed the permafrost table. How the authors did measure the soil thaw depth? Please state shortly how this was achieved.

Line 168: The abbreviation NDVI stands for Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, please edit the text so that this is clear.

Line 170: It is unclear what has been done to correct the reflectance data obtained for NDVI calculation. Please add details for traceability.

Line 174-176: It remains open how the authors did calculate the closeness. Please provide details.

Line 182 ff. I think this is a fraction value, please consider stating these as percentages for better readability.

Line 184-185: Please add details how this "vegetation cover, a controlled image classification" was achieved.

Figure 3:
Consider increasing the size of the figure and adding the explanation of the classes in the caption to the legend in the plot next to the colored rectangles.
Please check whether the relevant information is still visible in a black and white version. If not, consider adjusting the colors and the hue.
Is the "monitoring plot" in the caption referring to the "study region"? See above comment on the "study area"

Line 192: "higher the forest border" please add "than" so that the sentence part reads "higher than the forest border"

Line 210: Please correct the word “dendrochrochronological” in the header to “dendrochronological”

Line 212,228: Please bring "th" in "20th" to superscript position

Line 213: "This research..." Do the authors mean here "These tree stands..."?

Line 216: “each tree and sampling” I think the authors mean here "sapling" rather than "sampling". Please clarify and change accordingly.

Did authors include also dead tree individuals in their analyses? Were dead trees present either still standing on the sites or at the forest ground?

Line 228: Please cite the used tree-ring series here.

Line 235: It is not clear how the authors ensure for a stable weight. Did they let the samples dry until stable weight? How long was the drying time?

Line 264: "three stages in time", please delete the "in time"

Line 276. Please change the beginning of the sentence to "The ecological strategy" or "Ecological strategies"

Line 290-292: Change order of words in Line 290 to "group I" and in Line 292 to "group III" as your in text definition in Line 289-290.

Line 316: Please change in "2 ÷ 4 °C" the sign to a dash.
Please modify the sentence "an increase in average values" to "of average values"

Line 317: Here the authors say a "decrease in temperatures" was caused, but they write in the sentence before and afterwards temperatures increase. Please correct this wrong statement.

Line 319: Please correct "80ties" to "80s"

Figure 4, Line 328:
Please remove the blank space in the dimension statement for temperature to "°C"
What is the meaning of the word "filming" in the caption?
Should the dots be on the same location in the plots A and B? As they are not, e.g. two dots at ~1987 in A are in B at ~1980.

Line 332: Please add an “a” in “but significant” to “but a significant”

Line 333: Please correct "between seasons is observed" to "between the seasons can be observed"

Line 335-336: Please rewrite the sentence "increase in precipitation has been characteristic of all seasons with a shift to earlier months" to e.g. "increase in precipitation is characterizing all seasons, with a shift to earlier months."

Line 338: Please add here a line break before the last two sentences of this paragraph as it summarizes the observed temperature and precipitation changes.

Line 346: I think the authors use the term "destruction rate" as a synonym for "decomposition rate", here, in Table 2 and below in the text, as they do in the Methods section e.g. Line 162 "litter decomposition".
Please use in the manuscript the same, correct technical term when stating results and comparing them to literature values.

Line 347: "almost 2 times" Please either write "two times" or reword to "... this parameter almost doubled."

Line 349: The authors seem to refer to the mean value of 18.5% of cellulose decomposition rate from the time phase of 1978-1980 at 110 m a.s.l. from their table 2.

Please add here more information why they choose only to compare this value, or where the 18.5% value is referring to from their results.

Line 351: Please add a blank space between number an dimension so that it reads "10 °C"

Line 353: Do the authors mean here the "decomposition rates" or the change of such rates when temperatures increase? Please clarify.

Line 356, Footnote of Table 2: Please use "rate" rather than "speed" for this term. Furthermore, use "decomposition" rather than "destruction" (see comment for Line 346).

Line 363: Please add a "the" to "between upper belt" so it reads "between the upper belt"

Line 364: Please add a "depth" two times after “soil thaw”
Please add a "the" before "forest"

Line 368: Please move "st" to superscript in "21st"

Line 371: Please add a comma before and after the insertion in this sentence "e.g. soil glucosidase"

Line 376, Figure 5:
Please correct the wrong statement of the elevation height in the legend within the plot region of "260 m", this should be "230 m".
Please consider decreasing the line width of the border of the plot. This draws the attention to the results. Line width of axis should be the same or smaller than the line width of lines in the plot region.
Please use sentence style formatting for axis labels and write the first word with an uppercase character.
If the actual thaw depth values should be shown as labels next to the points, please add the missing one for 180 m a.s.l. in 2014. Please use a point for decimal point character.
It is unclear how the authors measured the thaw depth (see comment in the Methods section). Adding error bars would help to get a better understanding of variation and differences of the measurements.

Line 382: The use of the word "cosmonauts" and the year of "2019" of image acquisition needs to be clarified, as in the Methods section the authors state they used "... modern (~2016) submeter resolution satellite imagery ...".

Line 386, Figure 6:
Please add coordinates and a scale bar.
Maybe the authors could add in this figure the positions of their line transects.
Please correct the caption text "Treeline dynamics from 1956 to 2016 year (green color – forest to 1956, red – forest rise to 2016)." to e.g. "Treeline dynamics from the year 1956 to 2016 year (green color – forest already present in 1956, red – forest expansion until 2016)."

Line 388-390: Did the authors mean here "open forests" with “light forests” as at the beginning of the sentence? Please check.
The use of the dash characters in front of the displacement values might be misread as negative signs. Better use commas for structuring the sentence, or do the authors mean here negative forest advances?
Please abbreviate the dimention of the elevation "above sea level" with "a.s.l."

Line 394-399: It is unclear if the statements about the ages of cohorts are based on new data gathered for this study, or if this is information from the cited references in the paragraph above. Please clarify.

Line 400: Do the authors mean with "light forests" forests dominated solely by summergreen tree taxa, or do they want to refer to their used terminology of "open forests"? Please clarify.

Line 404-405, Line 412, Figure 7: When looking at the two maps with the produced closeness values for the years 1987 and 2018 in Appendix 2.1, I see a higher proportion of regions with high values (given in red) in the left map, which seems to be the older one. If these maps are closeness values and not rates as the authors state in the appendix, the authors should provide more details in the Methods section about how they calculated the rates. For now, overlaying these two maps would produce a decrease in the valleys (red regions in the left map, dark green regions in the right map), which is in contrast to Figure 7. Please clarify.
Please correct the date statement in the figure caption to DD.MM.YYYY and replace the word “Landsat” with “of Landsat acquisitions from the dates”. Furthermore, the dimension of “% / year” should be rewritten to either “%/yr” or “% per year”

Line 407: Please delete the misplaced "in" from "growing on in the south-eastern" and add a “the” before the “period”

Line 415: Please clarify the term "fullness of forests"

Line 416-417: The last part " during this short period of time" could be moved to the beginning of the sentence or deleted.

Line 417-418: Reword the sentence "In some areas, which 417 were almost treeless in the 1960s, these figures increased even more." e.g. to "These variables increased even stronger in In some areas, which were almost treeless in the 1960s."

Line 420-421: Please use past tense in "advance of its upper distribution border into higher areas is observed." and write "was observed"

Line 424-426: In Appendix 2.2., the authors only show shorter periods of NDVI-change maps, but not for the full period 1988-2017. This is shown in Figure 8, please correct the reference.

Line 428: Did the authors miss here "maximum values for larch covered areas" with the statement "larch NDVI max"?

Line 428-430: How did the authors assess the changes in NDVI per plant communities? They should provide details in the Methods section, how this has been calculated.

Figure 8, Line 440: Please give details for the "different vegetation types" as it is not clear where these are in the map that shows only the NDVI values.
Please add in the legend in the figure region the dimension of the values, e.g. "NDVI change (2017-1988)"

Line 447-448: Please remove the blank spaces from the dimension statements "t / ha" and add a dash in "21fold"

Line 450, Figure 9: Format genus names in italics in the figure legend, axis labels and in caption text.
First character of words should be uppercase in x-axis label "years" and the blank spaces removed in the dimension statements "t/ha" in y-axes labels.
Are the actual values adding more information to this figure? Please use points as decimal points.
Adding error bars would help to assess the variation of the measurements.

Line 451: Please correct the beginning of the sentence to "Phytomass dynamics were ..."

Line 453: The use of figure in the short sentence "For larch, this figure is 1.8 times." is unclear. The authors could reword it to e.g.: "For larch it is smaller with 1.8 times."

Line 457: The use of the word "past" is unclear. It is clear that the 19th century is in the past. Maybe the authors wanted to use "early 19th century". Please clarify.
Please bring "th" to superscript in "19th century"

Line 460: Do the authors use the word "reserves" as a synonym for "stocks"? Please use the latter word here when it refers to the accumulated biomass.

Line 463, Table 3: Please format genus names (Picea and Larix) in italics.

Line 465: Species extend their "distribution area" rather than individual trees "move". Please re-word the sentence "Currently, many typically boreal trees are rapidly moving north" to e.g. "Currently, many typical boreal tree species are rapidly extending their distribution area north along the  ..."

Line 470: In the enumeration "of Labytnangi, Salekhard towns " it is unclear whether Labytnangi is a region or a settlement. The authors could change it to "the towns Labytnangi and Salekhard".

Line 473: Please clarify the word "trees" by replacing it with "tree species"
Would it be possible to either move the statment that here the town is meant to in parentheses e.g. "... Labytnangi (town) ..." or re-word here and elsewhere in the manuscript to "... the town Labytnangi ...".

Line 475: Please correct "siberian pines" to "Siberian pines"

Line 482: The authors summarize their results and state here conclusions. They should think about starting the sentence alternatively with "In summary, ..." or "In conclusion, ...".

Line 483: Consider to replace the ambiguous word "grows" by "increases"

Line 491: What does "..., with edition]." in the reference parentheses mean? Please clarify.

Line 494: Better use parentheses here instead of dashes to insert "Corticioids".
Correct “divers” to “diverse”

Line 496: "In contrast thereto," an be given without the word "thereto"

Line 504, Figure 10:
The numbers for labelling the rows are not clearly visible.
Please use A, B, C, D rather than numbers for labelling the sub-plots in this figure. They could add at the top of the figure the two column headers "species richness" and "share".
However, I think this graphic could be optimized by only using the "species richness" graphs and adding the percentage values of each class in the stacked bar plots. By this modification, all information is still visible in only four rather than eight plots.
Furthermore, the x-axis is duplicated multiple times and could only be placed below the lowermost plot.
Decimal points should be points.
If values are given in the plot, please add all, or state in the caption why some are not given.
Use sentence style formatting for axes labels, i.e. the first word starts with an uppercase character.

Line 519: Replace "noted" with "observed"

Line 521: Delete "now"

Line 522: Please write "The NDVI ..." or "NDVI values ...".

Line 525: Maybe start this sentence with "Furthermore, the NDVI increased also in ..."

Line 529: "Labytnangi and Salekhard towns" See comment above for Line 470

Line 537, 672, 708, 711: “Sob river valley” should be corrected to “Sob River valley”

Line 538: Please consider using "... due to warming ..." rather than "Now, thanks to warming"

Line 541-542, 566: Please change the order of words and use "Mount Slansevaya"

Line 566: Please give at least a reference to one of the "regional Red Books of Russia" or a link to a webpage at which these can be accessed.

Line 578: Please add a blank space between "trees" and the parenthesis.

Line 580: Most probably the authors mean here "observed". The word "identified" could also be read as they found parasitic species but did not identify them.

Line 616: Please use parentheses for the insertion "eurybionts" and change "reduce their numbers" to "reduced in numbers"

Line 620: Spelling error, the authors seem to wanted to write "definitely proves", but maybe replace this with "strongly supports"

Line 623: Please replace "identified" with "observed"

Line 628: Wrong reference, please update to "Appendix 1.4"

Line 629: What are the authors mean with "thermal resources"? Do they refer maybe to a "lack of warmth" in this region?

Line 630: "selective effort" Do the authors mean here "sampling effort"? Please clarify.

Line 631: Please consider re-wording the insertion "(first identified and not yet identified)" to "...(first and not yet observed)..."

Line 636: Please modify "on deeply thawed soil (humus saprobs – Clavariadelphus pistillaris" to "on deeply thawed soil, the humus saprobs (Clavariadelphus pistillaris"

Line 639: At other places in this chapter the authors use the term "Arcto-alpines", maybe they could use it here instead of "Arctic-Alpine" for a better understanding.

Line 647: Please add “depth” after “Soil thaw”

Line 649: Replace "meters" with the abbreviation "m"

Line 651: Please move "significantly" in front of "increased"

Line 653 and 654: Please replace “increase” with “increased”

Line 654-656: The sentence is not properly structured, please consider re-wording it to e.g. "At areas dominated by spruce and shrubs, the NDVI increased ...". And use "increase" rather than "grew" for NDVI variables.

Line 656: Please correct "Polar Urals vegetation cover" to "Polar Ural's vegetation cover"
"are occurring" - Either refer to what has been observed by replace with "occured", or if the authors wanted to refer that this is an ongoing process then use "is occuring".

Line 659: Please clarify the meaning of this sentence by connecting this sentence with the following, e.g. "It could be that the first period (1960-1979) was significantly understudied, but ..."

Line 670: Replace "meters" with "m"

Line 674: Unclear what the authors mean with "In this regard, the complex of fungi analysed". Do they wanted to say "... the fungi found in the first period (1960-1979) seem to be correct and are reflecting ..."? Please clarify.

Line 687: Please delete "of the nature"

Line 696-697: Please consider re-wording this sentence because the placement of the cause "due to warming" makes it hard to read. E.g. start with the cause "Due to warming of the region, growing of various crops becomes possible and it can be assumed that corresponding parasitic fungi will appear at the same time."

Line 706: Please change "automobile and railway roads" to "roads and railway tracks"

Line 708: Replace in “expand it, increase” the comma with “to”

Line 710: Better use here "infrastructure" or state additionally "railway tracks" instead of "roads" for clarification.

Line 718: Please use the plural of "NDVI map"

Line 726: Please us the word "rate" instead of "speed"

 

Appendix

Appedix 1.2: “Citations and References in Supplementary files are permitted provided that they also appear in the reference list of the main text.” (From the information for authors at the journal webpage at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/instructions)
If this strictly applies to the presented reference list here, the authors should add these references to their list at the end of the main text.

Appendix 1.3: Remove in the caption text the apostrophe in “Sob’ …” (also in Appendix 2.3 and 2.4)
Please change the beginning of the sentence “Surprise, but this rare Agaricoid fungus - Cortinarius violaceus (L.) Gray - was  widespread and often found on the slopes of Slantsovaya Mount during August 2019.” to “The rare Agaricoid fungus…”

Appendix 1.4: The caption text is unclear, do the authors mean “List of large-body species of Aphyllophoroid fungi that appeared or are still absent in the study region” with “Large-bodies species of Aphyllophoroid fungi appeared in the region and what still absent”?

Appendix 2.1: Please replace Cyrillic to Latin letters, in the caption and in the legend.
Is the dimension “% per year” as the values seem to be the closeness given as a fraction.

Appendix 2.2: Please replace Cyrillic to Latin letters, in the caption and in the legend.

Appendix 2.3: Genus or species names should be formatted in italics.
Please correct “Mount” to “Mountain” (also in App 2.4.)
The dimension should be correct from “C°” to “°C “
Change “Trees crown density“ to „Tree crown density“
Do the authors refer here with “timberline” to the “treeline” as used in the main text?

 

Author Response

Please, see the answers below.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors applied remote sensing and field-based ecological approach to understanding vegetation (Tree, shrub, mycobiota) response to climate change in the Polar Urals, Russia. The manuscript has very good potential; however, compelling story is lacking. The manuscript needs to be reorganized before consideration for the publication.

Major comments

I suggest authors remove the mycobiota part of the MS and focus on treeline and shrubline OR only focus on mycobiota part. At the current stage, MS is hard to focus on. It is not clear how treeline study is related to mycobiota part. Litter decomposition and soil defrost estimation part are not connected with the main aim of the study.

Research questions are too complex. Make your research questions simple.

If the main objective of the paper is to evaluate the response of the mycobiota to climate change, I am wondering why authors are studying treeline and permafrost thaw depth?

How the forest line and treeline was defined in the study was not clear.

How remote sensing imageries were processed?

Please separate result and discussion sections.

Rewrite the conclusion section. Please, limit the section into two paragraphs only.

 

Minor comments

Line 37. Increased

Line 115. Display Sob River in the study area map

Line 123. It is not clear the MS how authors applied topographic correction of satellite images.

Line 133. Time period of observation (is it 1953-2018?)

Line 161. Please describe your study transects in detail.

Line 204. It is not clear which submeter resolution satellite imagery is the authors referring to here.

Line 211. How many plots? Size of the plots? How they were laid down in the field – the distance between two plots, laid in the topographically uniform area or heterogeneous area.

Line 216. Sampling?

Line 220. How many trees?

Line 229. The age structure diagram is not presented in the result section.

Line 248. Most of the information authors provided in the 2.5 Fungal sampling section is the literature review. Please, concise your text.

Line 537-539, line 623-624, line 704-711. Adjust formatting issue

Figure 3. Move the figure description at the bottom of the figure and adjust the font. This will give more space for the figure.

Figure 6. Scale, legend, and orientation is missing. 

Figure 7, 8. I suggest the authors make these figures larger. It is hard to visualize at the current form. You can orient legend vertical to make more space for the figure.

Author Response

Please, see the answers below.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing my comments and improving the manuscript and its supplementary information.

I have found some minor formatting/spelling errors that need to be considered:

Line 309: Please correct use of verb “are deposit” to “are deposited”

Figure 5: Please delete the “year”, “forests to” to “forests in”

Line 438: Please add a blank space to separate “21from” to “21 from”

Line 580: Please add before “parameter” an “a” to “a parameter”

Author Response

Please, responses to reviewer № 1 see below.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has improved since the last submission. However, several issued raised during the first review stage were still unanswered (especially, figures size-related and remote sensing image processing). MS must go under extensive English editing. I have highlighted a few issues below:  

Line 20. Delete of

Line 116. What type of orographic structure authors analyzed? What was the purpose?

Line 134. ha/individual or individual/ha?

Line 158. m a.s.l

Line 159. Use m instead of meters

Line 165. Index

Line 209. m

Line 315. Space between the1980

Line 342. m a.s.l (change m above sea level to m a.s.l)

Line 357. m a.s.l (change m above sea level to m a.s.l)

Line 411. sand?

Line 435.

Line 438-439. Rewrite the sentence. 21form?; use t/ha

Line 491. ulcata,Phellinu (space); arcularius Ramaria (comma)

Line 496. Figure 10?

Line 535. 6.3 % to 3.5%, be consistent space between number and percentage symbol

Line 571. Replace "meters" with "m"; fixed this issue in rest of the MS

Line 584.  with significant

Line 588. theyr or their?

Line 687. m instead of meters

Line 691. 10 times

Label Sob River in the map 1 A and B

Still, maps are too small to read. For example, figures 6&7. It can be made larger by aligning legend vertically and placing scale bar within the frame.

Please correct the table 2 and table 3. Comma or decimal?

Discussion can be improved.

Author Response

Please, our answers see below.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx