Effect of Altitude and Topography on Vegetation Phenological Changes in the Niubeiliang Nature Reserve of Qinling Mountains, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of the article:

Effect of Topographic and Climatic Factors on Vegetation Phenological Changes in the Niubeiliang Nature Reserve of Qinling Mountains, China

General: The article is focusing on the effects of altitude and topography (aspect, slope) in the Qinling Mountains, China.  It is well written and of topical interest for Geobotanists and foresters as it reveals the linkages between topography, climate and forest types. Before publications the authors should consider some things with regard to balancing their manuscript.

Generally, I recommend to add more literature comparison and discussion and shorten the conclusions a bit. Such an interesting article would gain more when considering a higher number of references (at least 60-70) and a more structured and interesting discussion. Please consider that FORESTS is an international journal with an international audience and it would be interesting to see your results also a bit more in comparison and perspective of international sources. Currently your sources seem to largely be limited to Chinse authors.

Some proposals for improvement:

Title: title looks fine, but may be finetuned. As I understood altitude and topography (slope, aspect) are the main initial factors of your study that impact climatic conditions, growing season etc… which then strongly influence vegetation communities.

Materials and methods:

2.3: what is meant with “Reacher Methods” ? Or do you mean “Research methods”?

Results: this is a good section I think and the figures and text provide good information

Discussion:

This section is too short. Please lengthen and structure better. You should structure into 2 or 3 sub headlines with respective paragraphs.

It may be like this (just proposal, you may know better how to structure your text):

4.1 Influence of altitude, slope and aspect on forest formations

Here I see the current lines 529- 550. Size of this text part is almost sufficient, but I hardly see comparison with other literature sources?! You need to compare your interesting results here with other sources, even if other studies are not so detailed and form other regions! Also you do not have sufficient precipitation data you may hypothesise its influence based on other sources and increasing altitude with obvious shifts in species composition.

4.2 Temperature influence on phenology

Here I see line 551-566. Where are literature sources /comparison here?

4.3 Significance of the results in the context of climate change.

Here especially line 515-527. But please add more (more text and more sources for comparison)!

Conclusion: Some of this part can be moved to Discussion. In general Conclusion should be shorter (ca. 50 %).

References:

I think it would be good if you could consider some more sources and compare more in your discussion, especially from other regions where topography plays a decisive role (e.g. Mongolian Mountain forest steppe). There are for example several studies on forest steppe in Mongolia which also mention or highlight the strong impact of topography on vegetation (Dulamsuren, Baatarbileg, Gerelbaatar, Gradel, Menzel). But also, studies from other regions may be useful for your discussion. It would be good if you finally have more than 60 sources. It will benefit your manuscript to consider more studies and other perspectives.

Author Response

Please see the attachment。

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The purpose of this study was to reveal the laws of vegetation phenology change and its influence effects in the mountain nature reserves in the context of climate change. The reserve is located in the relatively intact natural forest region in the eastern Qinling Mountains, and the forest coverage rate is more than 96%, is known as the "green pearl". The reserve is located at the meeting place of the north and south climates in China.

Appropriate scientific methods were used in the work. Conclusions are based on the results obtained. The work lacks a climatogram. Table 1 was not cited in the text. The results in Table 1 have not been explained.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf