Spatial Pattern of Climate Change Effects on Lithuanian Forestry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper has been improved and ready for publication. 

Reviewer 2 Report

I have now re-reviewed the paper and I acknowledge that improvements on the manuscript have been made – however, these are all formal improvements regarding the length of the text and the presentation of the figures – the core drawbacks of the study have not been changed, and I must say that I did not expect that. That is why I concluded to reject the paper and not reconsider it after major revisions – as these major revisions would have required to tackle these core drawbacks, which is difficult give the methodological framework that is used here. Therefore I did not change my oppinion and still recommend to reject the paper.

First, I find it inappropriate to use a term like “… slaughtering a methodology…” – this was definitely not the intention of the review – a paper that comes with the title “Spatial pattern of climate change effects on…forestry” needs a model that is climate sensitive – this is not the case here – changes in growth that are analyzed in this study are based on assumptions – so the results do only reflect these assumptions and are not based on any sort of evidence. Looking at the description of how the model includes climate change (l.451-479), I have to conclude that this is not state-of-the-art – neither how climate change is depicted (this would require one or better a couple of generally accepted IPCC scenarios) nor how the effect on growth is reflected. The NO POLICY scenario is an irrelevant scenario, as it does not assume any change of the environmental conditions. The insufficiency of the approach is clearly stated in the discussion (l.1261 ff.), but the suggestion on how to improve on that is rather trivial “… further studies (…) will be able to improve the simulations…” – the idea to use a process-based model is not raised here.

Second, I strongly object to the statement in the response “While the contribution of climate change to these phenomena (i.e. the disturbances like drought, wind and bark beetles) has not and cannot be exactly quantified…”. There is a multitude of studies out now dealing with these “phenomena” – I am only mentioning the one by Seidl et al. (2017) in Nature Climate Change – the results of this study have been successfully implemented into process-based models (e.g. like LPJ-Guess). Nobody expects an “exact” forecast of these disturbances, but simply omitting them (or referring to the past, which is almost the same) is insufficient. There a lot of worrying statements regarding that point in the re-submitted manuscript: e.g. on l.1299: (“… global climate change scenarios did not have substantial impact of vulnerability of landscapes to catastrophic events, such as fires or wind…” – I am wondering what type of study this is… this sounds really weird after years like 2018 and 2019), or (l.1258ff.) “…climate change has not impact on the age of stands, …(I am wondering whether the authors of the study are aware of the term “transition probability”), or (l.1312 – “Climate change induced long-term changes in forest growth, … are considered to have more significant impact than both, harvesting and natural disturbances…” (this study is indeed related to boreal forest, but is misinterpreted in the sense that you can neglect disturbances…). Looking at all that, I have to come back on my conclusion that a study that seeks for “decision support” and “… reduce uncertainty in current forest management decisions.” (l.1207) – (in fact that it is not reducing but simply ignoring uncertainties) by omitting disturbances and including very uncertain assumptions about a potential increase of forest growth without any evidence should not be accepted for publication in a scientific journal.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors tried to analyze the spatial pattern of climate change effects on Lithuanian forestry based on three scenarios of (1) REFERENCE, (2) EU BIOENERGY and (3) NO POLICY.  These three scenarios are developed by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) for the project ALTERFOR. 

For example, there are little differences between REFERENCE and EU BIOENERGY, although the trends under scenarios that consider climate change effects are usually more different from the NO POLICY case than each other, in Figs. 4 and 5.  As a result, the two scenarios of REFERENCE and EU BIOENERGY seem to be the same effects of climate change on forestry.  I don’t detect the reasons why there are little differences between REFERENCE and EU BIOENERGY from the present manuscript.

The main reason is not clear the differences between REFERENCE and EU BIOENERGY, although the authors explains simply the three scenarios in page 4 to 5.  However, I think that the readers are difficult to understand the differences in three scenarios, so I recommend the authors to state more in details, because this part is essential to this paper..

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

This is not really a scientific paper, but rather a project report – for a paper that can be submitted to a scientific journal, it is by far too long and does not match the standards of an ISI journal – the methodology is very doubtful (see my detailed comments)- the projections under climate change especially in terms of economics are utterly optimistic, given the fact that no effort is made to capture a potential change of the disturbance regimes – this is hard to believe after a year like 2018 with European-wide pest attacks after a extreme drought year that will certainly not be the last in the upcoming decades. I am sorry to come to the conclusion that this paper is not acceptable for publication and I don't see how in its present form it could be improved in that direction. I have nevertheless given some detailed comments to make a paper out of it that may be re-submitted to a journal.

Specific comments:

L. 17ff. : the abstract is by far too long, especially the description of the methodology that contains many unnecessary details (e.g. … the approach used here may be also applied…)- I suggest to shorten it by at least by 1/3

l. 68 ff. again, this is a very general and long text, I am wondering whether it is really necessary here, the concept of ES is well known…

l. 101- “… we want to ..” – (“… we aim to …”) I would rather state the goals of the study in present tense and then describe what you have done(methodology) in past tense

l. 107ff.  the order of the text is not really useful – you start describing the goals of your study on l. 101 ff. but you then again change into a sort of literature overview (DSS…) – and then you come back to describing goals or even methodology – (l. 129 ff.) – you need to bring this in a consistent order – first give an overview of the literature incl. a problem statement at the beginning – then you describe the goals of your study and then – in the next section the methodology (where you should move the text in lines 129-141) – I also suggest to better structure the introduction by at least including a section on “Goals of the study” (that could be a bit further elaborated, but with very long texts – the text is already rather lengthy… and should be shortened.)

l.129-141 (see above) – the way you formulate this here, this is clearly belonging to the method –section – if you think that these are your goals, then you need to re-formulate them accordingly

l.122-128  - I don’t think that this text is necessary here – this can be very briefly stated in the acknowledgments

L. 140 – again, I don’t think that this statement (“… can be applied….”) is necessary

l. 190 ff. so , according to this, you are only expecting positive effects on growth by CC, as you neglect any development of impacts of disturbances (l.182) this might be very optimistic, no?

 l.222-274 – this is not a text of a scientific paper, but rather a table (and should be presented as such) – this can easily go into an appendix or supplementary material

l. 237 – so mortality is only described for the current forest state, but does not take into account any changes of mortality due to Climate Change, correct? I would consider this to be a major drawback of this study – you only have positive effects of CC (that are to me with increased growth of up to 40% rather optimistic), but you do not take into account potential negative effects, I find this doubtful

l.274 – 282 again, this is a very long text describing a standard procedure how to calculate net revenues and doesn’t contribute to the scientific understanding of the text

L. 340 . “Another common feature..” this sentence is not really understandable, what do you mean by it?

Fig. 5 c – why are the EU policy and reference scenarios lacking here? This is strange – that you assume the same age development with different strategies, not really reliable, I would rather skip this figure – it is confusing

Fig. 5 and 6 – there is clearly too much information here – you should concentrate on the main findings and display them in the text, i.e. not more than 4 plates (a-d) per figure – the rest can go in an appendix or supplement – you are flooding the reader with information here.

L. 356 – standing volume per ha…  in the following text you basically repeat what is already depicted in the figures – this makes the whole article very long

Fig. 7, 8 ,9,10 – again this is by far too much information – concentrate on the 4 most important aspects per figure and put a header above each plate in the figure – like that, nobody knows what is behind the different figures and has to go through this extremely long and hard to read captions – the purpose of figures is to illustrate the text and bring the information to the point – here you reach the opposite, these figures are repellent

Fig. 11, 12 – here you talk about statistical significance like that was an empirical assessment – but you talk about a model with the uncertainties in it and all the assumptions you have in that model – I would very careful to use the term significance here…  again by far too detailed as a figure (11)

Fig. 13 – again this is a nightmare of information wealth – this has nothing to do in the text of a scientific paper –at the utmost you can put something like that in a supplement

Fig. 14 – see my comment above – you cannot retrieve anything from this figure, by far too much information presented in a way that you can hardly detect anything in it except a bunch of arrows pointing in different directions

l. 561 ff. discussion – the discussion is largely insufficient insofar, as it does not properly take into account the uncertainties and weaknesses of the modelling approach, the very short remark (among all the other very long text sections) in line 590 that the model does not include climate effects (but makes nevertheless projections over 100 years under 2 climate scenarios) is by far too less – the fact that the IIASA scenarios in terms of economic development are just adopted without even looking behind the uncertainties related to them does certainly not improve on that – but what is certainly the most problematic in this section is, that the lack of a proper discussion of a potential change of the disturbance regimes under a changing climate in terms of wind, bark beetles and drought, the latter two being directly related to climate warming – any “decision support” reaching far into an uncertain future should be handled very carefully – I would therefore not recommend any politician to use such a system.

Conclusions:

l. 728 I would strongly oppose the statement that this methodology on which this case study is based on, can serve as an internationally valid example – it is far away from any international standards.  

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper tackles a comprehensive research endeavor in forest management focusing on the effects of climate change activities on Lithuanian forests and forestry.  The manuscript is a well-written research paper that has a great value for considering publication in FORESTS.  The manuscript has further value as it considered the spatial dynamics of climate change (the genuine contribution of the paper), which is a novel approach in forest management planning process. However, there are some minor issues throughout the paper to tackle before it is accepted for publications. These are listed below.   

General comments:

Line211: “None      of the national studies considered the effects of climate change on forest      growth and forestry” is a brave statement though it would be true. Yet, it      seems to contradict with the statements in the first paragraph of the      discussion (Lines: 562-588)! Statement like the one in line 590 is      necessary; giving the fact that I appreciate the scarcity of research      about the climate change impact on forest growth.

The evaluation      of results based on ownership is not mentioned in the objective. Either      revise the objective to include it or opt out the additional scenarios      reflecting the ownership differences such as state and private forests.

It is      important to set/explain the “biological understanding” of the stand      dynamics in model development stage (explore the mechanics of the model      development a bit further) to appreciate the changes of forest parameters      under actions. For example, how did the share of broadleaved species change      over time? What was the real cause of that change in the model? Or what      were the basic assumptions of interactions to cause such changes. Or, what      is the “driving variable” to cause a spatially cluster forest under      climate change effects? Are the trees/stands clustering spatially to      defend/become strong in smaller geographic locations to survive and combat      with the increasing climate or else? This is also valid for most of the      parameters for better understanding of the causative basis of forest dynamics/Development      over time.  Otherwise whole results      would be questionable -under doubt.

The      extended interpretation or solution proposal as a result of this study is      not quite apparent. Would the authors, for example, recommend such studies      in each and every different region/ecosystems/eco-geo-climate area/county      to understand the effects of, first, the climate change mitigation efforts      on the forests and forestry or use this result and conduct climate      mitigation actions in forest management? Or regarding the positive and      negative effects, would you discuss that some ES (i.e., wood production vs      biodiversity) are already contradictory, with or without climate change      mitigation efforts ? Need comments on that.

Minor comments

Abstract      is unnecessarily long (some introductory sentences), needs to be shortened      

 “… the approach used here may be also      applied to any other region… sic” is misplaced, i.e., early to state here.      It may be placed to the end of abstract/conclusion.

In      abstract (line 37-38), say how much the negative effect is on hardwood      share; ?%. similarly, (line 42-42) “stronger negative impacts of dynamics      of biodiversity-related forest attributes” ,what specifically the negative      effect was? Loss of habitat for species? degraded forest? Fragmented      forest, or direct decrease of wildlife population, particularly target      species!!

The paper      is also long and, some introductory narrations (75 – 121) could be cut      short.

Figures 2,      3 and 4 are blurred unable, unable to read and to see the contents!

Line 287-288:      run-on sentence. Needs rewording for better reading.

710-713:      sentence confusion. “.. increasing forest growth under a warmer climate      results in larger tree dimensions, [increasing or appropriate adjective?] volume      of growing stock and harvested assortments, and annual wood volume      increments, consequently leading to higher profits of forestry activities”

Reviewer 3 Report

My concerns are about a relatively medium-low consideration of the CO2 exchange/balance. I would like to read more direct estimates and evaluations.

The article seems to take for granted that the future growth behaviour/response of growth of tree species is completely understood. There are recent signals that growth response may not be those we expect due to genetical, demoecological, ecophysiological, phytopatological, phenological, and reproductive alterations/changes.

Further exploration of recent  research relative to adaptive forest management under changing climate conditions may be helpful.