Income and Ecosystem Service Comparisons of Refined National and Agroforestry Accounting Frameworks: Application to Holm Oak Open Woodlands in Andalusia, Spain
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
You have presented an interesting case of comparative study between refined national and agroforestry accounting frameworks. The topic is certainly promising and could add to overcome the flaws of the current environmental accounting systems. However, the authors have to be very specific to underline their contributions.
I found the manuscript interesting but too-long to follow which is further became complex because of the too many definitions, concepts, and acronyms. The manuscript needs to be shortened and more focused to follow the arguments and findings.
I feel that, in general, the submission needs significant restructuring. Firstly, the manuscript is too long and the length itself is a big factor to convey the scientific addition, objectives, research gaps of the manuscript. Please reduce by at least 40% which is possible. Surely, the journal allows non-binding length, however, the manuscript and the subject issue do not warrant that. There are plenty of scopes to reduce in the sections following the introduction.
I also found that the abstract is not self-explanatory. It does not provide the methods employed, the highlights of the results and the policy implications of the research.
The English language should be improved. Please check it by a native speaker.
the authors need to find a way to present the long list of acronyms and complex definitions. These are problematic for a reader to grasp. Because of this, it is difficult to identify the objectives of the research and research questions. Similarly, authors also need to demonstrate why such a comparative methodological study is necessary? How will it advance the present accounting and remove the flaws of existing systems?
Authors should also mention at the beginning that AAS, SEEA-EES or rSNA (which is not defined) are Spanish, regional or international accounting systems.
I found the methodology is also disoriented. For example, plenty of new concepts is introduced, defined and discussed there, which should be part of the introduction (e.g. section 2.2.1 and 2.2.2). As I mentioned, the intro section lacks clarity and knowledge review, the authors could think about shifting some sections from methods to introduction. It is important that the authors introduce a methodological flowchart to follow the methods.
I also did not find anything about the data, data collection, protocol, analysis, and assessment, although, the manuscript is based on empirical investigation.
The result section is the longest and needs to be shortened. Disaggregating the ecosystem services is unnecessary and authors can discuss it together. Provide the data sources of table 1, if it is your own data, how did you calculate it? Although, I generally found that the results are interesting, particularly, the comparison sections, however, it is very difficult to follow because of the extensive length and too many subject matters. Therefore, authors should identify which issues they should emphasize and discuss.
The discussions and conclusion look OK to me.
Author Response
R1. You have presented an interesting case of comparative study between refined national and agroforestry accounting frameworks. The topic is certainly promising and could add to overcome the flaws of the current environmental accounting systems. However, the authors have to be very specific to underline their contributions.
A1.1 In several of the new texts mentioned below we have attempted to improve the explanation of contributions of the article on the concepts and applications of our Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS) and official standard System of National Accounts (SNA) with our slight refinement (rSNA), this being limited to avoiding the bias in the SNA due to the periodization problem associated with the timing of when the natural growth of the timber, cork and firewood occurs and the moment at which the income is measured (extraction of woody products).
R1.2. I found the manuscript interesting but too-long to follow which is further became complex because of the too many definitions, concepts, and acronyms. The manuscript needs to be shortened and more focused to follow the arguments and findings.
A1.2. We understand the reviewer’s comment regards mitigating the complexity arising from both the length and the variety of aspects covered in our article. Reducing the concepts and accounting methods (Section 2) and the results (Section 3) would mean losing the objective of estimating and describing the individual economic activities which allow consistency in the measurement of the aggregate results for ecosystems with multiple inter-linked uses. This is the case of the holm oak open woodlands (HOW) of Andalusia-Spain. In the existing literature only a small number of the multiple uses which take place in an ecosystem type are valued, which does not allow the robustness of the individual measurements to be determined given the omission of the economic interactions which explain an aggregate result consistent with the observed economic rationales of the consumers, landowners and government. We consider the novel contribution of our article to be the fact that it values 15 individual activities in a single ecosystem type, thus highlighting the inevitable complexity involved in measuring the ecosystem services and incomes from the HOW ecosystem type. However, we have deleted from Section 3 the HOW physical description and characterization of the classifications in the literature on ecosystem services with regard to provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Therefore, we focus on HOW environmental economic accounting frameworks comparison in a way of providing a detailed response to the demands of the different actors interested in the contributions of the ecosystems to the value of the total products, ecosystem services, environmental income and social total incomes which they generate.
For the reasons detailed above and bearing in mind that the journal Forests does not put a restriction on article size, we submitted our article for review with the hope that our objective of presenting a detailed description of our research, explaining the consistency of the aggregate results based on individual measurements of the HOW economic activities valued would be acceptable. We believe that these detailed explanations justify the length of the article and accept as necessary the difficulty caused by the complexity of our research.
R1.3. I feel that, in general, the submission needs significant restructuring. Firstly, the manuscript is too long and the length itself is a big factor to convey the scientific addition, objectives, research gaps of the manuscript. Please reduce by at least 40% which is possible. Surely, the journal allows non-binding length, however, the manuscript and the subject issue do not warrant that. There are plenty of scopes to reduce in the sections following the introduction.
A1.3. Along with the reasons given in the A1.2 response, our article describes the diversity of institutions which govern the HOW silvopastoral ecosystems in Andalusia, the realities faced by the owners and the government regarding the necessity for overall valuation of a set of private and public products of the HOW, with the additional aim of simultaneously recording the valuations of goods and services with and without market price for the period. All of these aspects are being scrutinized in the current revision taken into account of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA) which is coordinated by the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) [16]. Although we recognize the difficulty inherent in the length of the article, we believe that the benefit of reducing the length is outweighed by the fact that there would inevitably be an important loss in terms of relevant individual valuations.
R1.4. I also found that the abstract is not self-explanatory. It does not provide the methods employed, the highlights of the results and the policy implications of the research.
A1.4. We have revised and extended the abstract in accordance with the reviewer suggestions and Forests author guidelines. The revised abstract increased in size from 171 words of the previous abstract to the 274 words the new abstract.
R1.5. The English language should be improved. Please check it by a native speaker.
A1.5. The first version of the article was edited by a native speaker from the USA who was working with us at the IPP-CSIC as stated in the acknowledgements. Nevertheless, this second revised version of the article has been checked and edited by an English professional translator.
R1.6. The authors need to find a way to present the long list of acronyms and complex definitions. These are problematic for a reader to grasp. Because of this, it is difficult to identify the objectives of the research and research questions.
A1.6. We have incorporate to the article a glossary of selected acronyms and definitions of the economic variables in the Appendix A.
R1.7. Similarly, authors also need to demonstrate why such a comparative methodological study is necessary?
A1.7. This has now been dealt with in several new paragraphs and revised texts in the Introduction Section 1, including the texts transferred from Section 2 of concepts and accounting methods as they had been suggested by the reviewer. The revised Section 1 increased in size from 1,111 words of the previous Section 1 to the 2,979 words the new Introduction.
R1.8. How will it advance the present accounting and remove the flaws of existing systems?
A1.8. We have added new text explaining the reasons for the public policy derived from the possible implementation of the refined standard national accounts (rSNA) and our extended Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS) applied to silvopastoral systems at any scale or economic unit.
New texts has been added in the Introduction (Section 1) to show the challanges to be overcome in future extensión of the standard national accounts towards building ecosystem accouhnting. Our HOW Agroforestry Accounting System scientific experimnental application at large scale (Andalusia region) overcome the rSNA failure to measure explicitely nature economic con tibuiti0on to total product and incomes.
R1.9. Authors should also mention at the beginning that AAS, SEEA EEA or rSNA (which is not defined) are Spanish, regional or international accounting systems.
A1.9. We have dealt with this in new texts added in the Introduction (Section 1). In addition, we have moved the definition of the rSNA which was in lines 370-378 to the new Introduction. We have corrected any errors observed and made changes which we think improve the definition of the rSNA.
R1.10. I found the methodology is also disoriented. For example, plenty of new concepts is introduced, defined and discussed there, which should be part of the introduction (e.g. section 2.2.1 and 2.2.2). As I mentioned, the intro section lacks clarity and knowledge review, the authors could think about shifting some sections from methods to introduction. It is important that the authors introduce a methodological flowchart to follow the methods.
A1.10. We have added a new Fig. 1 which we think will make the concepts and measurement of the economic variables easier to follow. We have revised Section 2 in response to the reviewer’s comment regarding the content, adapting this section in accordance with Forests guide to authors. We have moved several paragraphs from Section 2 in the first version, lines 114-128, 131-136, 139-177 and 216-225 to the new Introduction. We have also moved the paragraphs in lines 179-312 of Section 2 in the first version to Discussion (Section 4) in the revised version.
The revised Section 2 decreased in size from 3,802 words of the previous Section 2 to the 1,852 words the new Section 2.
R1.11. I also did not find anything about the data, data collection, protocol, analysis, and assessment, although, the manuscript is based on empirical investigation.
A1.11. The primary information is the authors’ own data which comes from the RECAMAN project [17]. A new paragraph has been added in the Results (Section 3), lines 409-414.
R1.12. The result section is the longest and needs to be shortened. Disaggregating the ecosystem services is unnecessary and authors can discuss it together.
A1.12. In responses A1.2 and A1.3 we have explained the reasons why we have deleted the HOW institutional setting and biophysical results (deleting Fig. 1 and Tables 1 and 2). Meanwhile we kept the description of the individual activities ecosystem services and incomes results given the particularities and quantitative importance of the valuations. However, we have deleted previous Fig. 4, and separated it in the new Figs. 4 and 5. Previous Fig. 6 has been deleted.
R1.13. Provide the data sources of table 1, if it is your own data, how did you calculate it?
A.13. We have now included the data source referring to the RECAMAN project from which the unpublished primary data was taken.
R1.14. Although, I generally found that the results are interesting, particularly, the comparison sections, however, it is very difficult to follow because of the extensive length and too many subject matters. Therefore, authors should identify which issues they should emphasize and discuss.
A1.14. It is difficult to get it right when attempting to simplify the text when the aim is to present the variety of products, ecosystem services and types of income measured in the ecosystem type using the rSNA and AAS methodologies compared. It is possible to simplify the article if we change the objective and limit ourselves, for example, to the aggregate values for farmer and government as well as the sum of aggregates of both compared in the two methodologies. We could also change the objective to only presenting the aggregate values for the ecosystem services and environmental income. However, we do not think that it is possible to simplify the article in this way without losing the valuable perspective given by presenting all the pieces of the puzzle, which in this case are the estimates of the economic contribution of the HOW or any other silvo-pastoral type ecosystem to the products consumed by people in the period and/or which are expected to be consumed in the ecosystem in the future. We prefer to keep to the initial objective of presenting all the singularities of the economic variety present and which are not normally presented in the few studies available in the literature applied to silvo-pastoral ecosystems.
R1.15.The discussions and conclusion look OK to me.
A1.15 We thank the reviewer for his comments, which have allowed us to improve the explanation of the content of the manuscript as well as the edition of tables and figures. However, we have not managed to reduce the number of pages for the reasons given in the above said, although we think that the length of the this article main text could be acceptable since it complies with the criteria of the authors’ guide provided by Forests and the reviewer´ suggestions that we have included in the article new version.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I would find the addition of a glossary defining all the abbreviations used within the manuscript very helpful. I don't know whether this is something the editors would agree to. At 40 pages, I wonder whether the manuscript could/should be reduced in length. Can font size in Figure 4 be increased? Figure 5: Poor quality resolution. Figure and Table captions should not include abbreviations that are not defined within the caption e.g. Table 3 should begin "Agroforestry Accounting System production ..." and not "AAS production ..." No edits to make re: use of English language and grammer.Author Response
R2.1I would find the addition of a glossary defining all the abbreviations used within the manuscript very helpful.
A2.1 We have included an Appendix A with a glossary of names, abbreviations and definitions of the selected economic variables used in our article.
R2.2 I don't know whether this is something the editors would agree to. At 40 pages, I wonder whether the manuscript could/should be reduced in length.
A2.2 In our replies to reviewer 1 we explain why we think the detailed changes incorporated in the new Sections 1, 2 and 3 descriptions in the accounting background concepts, methods and results justifies the size of this article should be kept, although it has been decrease 9% in the number of words respect the previous version.
R2.3 Can font size in Figure 4 be increased? Figure 5: Poor quality resolution. Figure and Table captions should not include abbreviations that are not defined within the caption e.g. Table 3 should begin "Agroforestry Accounting System production ..." and not "AAS production ..."
A2.3 All these suggestions have been included. Fig 4 has been separated in the new figures 4 and 5.
R2.4 No edits to make re: use of English language and grammar.
A2.4 A professional native English translator has checked the English.
We thank the reviewer for the positive valuation of our article and for the suggestions which have helped us to improve the clarity of the texts, the tables and the figures.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
