Comparing Geography and Severity of Managed Wildfires in California and the Southwest USA before and after the Implementation of the 2009 Policy Guidance

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks to the authors for making some relatively minor changes to the manuscript as well as answering my questions. I recommend it be accepted. This is an important topic and I look forward to further work in the area.

Author Response

This reviewer has recommended accepting the paper within changes.  No changes have been made as a result of this recommendation.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

The basic science of this paper has been conducted to a good and appropriate standard. The author and his team wrote this paper according to journal scope. I am glad to reviewed this paper because the author and his/her team write very well. Most important authors should add conclusion at the end of the manuscript. 

Minor revision in the attachment.

Best Regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We have added a conclusion section which includes a single paragraph as recommended by this reviewer.

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

The article is well written with some very minor grammar and definition clarifications needed. The analysis is scientifically sound and the results are interesting and appropriately presented.  I am attaching a marcked up PDF version of the manuscript with several small suggestions, minor grammar changes, suggestions to improve the clarity of figures and notes on missing reference 27 and incorrect reference 55.

I’m sure this is a common complaint, but I would recommend starting with your definition of managed fire as a shorthand vernacular for "fire managed for resource benefit or other objectives beyond protection." Or simply "fire managed with a strategy other than full suppression" as stated about half-way through the methods(See Meyer 2015).  Protection of an asset, resource, or population is an objective.  Suppression is a strategy to meet a protection objective that is commonly misused. See IncidentObjectives.pdf (nwcg.gov) for more detailed information on fire management objectives vs. strategies.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Iniguez and coauthors present an analysis of some properties of managed wildfires in California and the Southwest US in the 8 years before and after the introduction of new policy on managed wildfires. They find that managed fires occur closer to wilderness areas and further from the WUI, involve fewer agencies and burn at lower severity compared to suppressed wildfires. While there were some differences between managed fires in California and the Southwest US, the authors didn’t find any notable differences pre and post-policy introduction.

Congratulations to the authors on an interesting and useful study. It is clearly presented and easy to follow. If we are going to coexist with fire, as they say, it is critical to assemble what data we can and try to understand it. Targeting policy interventions is particularly relevant. I don’t have any major concerns but I do have a few questions.

• Can the authors comment on our understanding of the effects of managed fire as a strategy vs the effects of the fire which may have been realised regardless of whether this strategy was adopted?
• I sometimes found myself wanting to see more data e.g. the size distribution of managed vs suppressed fires, actual values rather than relative frequencies. Could the authors include some of this in supp material?
• How confident can we be in the conclusions given the relatively short time periods involved? There have been so many record breaking fires since 2016, would including them change anything? Likewise, going back further and factoring in earlier policy changes in addition to the 2009 one might have found different results.
• Could there be other variables that have changed over time, which may explain the (lack of) trends? A general decrease in the frequency of moderate conditions may undermine the strategy?
• Related to the previous comment, can we compare the (lack of) trends in managed fire to suppressed fire? Have they changed in geography or severity over the same time period?