Dynamics of Forage and Management Implications for Large Herbivore Habitat in Seasonally Dry Forest of Southeast Asia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
L7: This sentence is not clear, please revise.
L22: It might be beneficial to provide more information regarding these fires. Are these man-made fires or naturally occurring ones?
L71-77: I suggest including the acronyms for the different forest types in this section already (MDF, DDF etc.)
L79: The description of the sampling plot design is somewhat confusing. The “set of points” related to an area from which a 30 x 30 m plot was chosen. Not clear what Figure S1 is (I assume simply Figure 1).
L88: This research was conducted with permission from…
Figure 1: This figure and graph are not precise enough. It says the “black squares” indicate the location of the plot but technically there’s not a single square in this picture. The authors very likely meant the small red squares.
Figure 2: What are these data points in the column depicting “Grass?”
L91: Please provide more details on how you derived a weight value from the forage. Exactly how did you determine the dry weight? Not clear from the description whether or not you actually clipped grass samples or not.
L95: The authors say each twig with a diameter greater than 0.5 mm were counted. This is almost not credible. How did you do that with potentially hundreds if not more twigs on the trees? Did you set a specific browsing height as reference point?
L101: Again, not clear what kind of samples and actually how many were obtained for, e.g. forage. Each 30 x 30 m plot contained three 2 x 5 m plots; those were further divided into six 1 x 1 m plots; yet you say three subplots in each 30 x 30 m plot were samples. So how many samples did you actually obtain?
L120: There needs to be description provided on the experimental design used for this study. T
L135: This description should be moved to the Materials and Method section. I wonder why the authors didn’t use equal numbers of plots for each forest type.
L181: You don’t have to define the forest type with an acronym anymore once you done it (in the Materials and Methods section).
L218: Was the area or parts of it prescribed burned during the study period? This issues comes up repeatedly but I can’t find relevant information in the Materials/Method section.
L232: By whom or what was the fire initiated?
Figure 4: What are the dots denoting in these graphs?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
My review of this manuscript is mostly contained in comments in the attached PDF. I appreciate this work as it informs our understanding of land management activities and food availability for endangered ungulates in an understudied part of the world. I am familiar with literature in well-studied grassland-shrubland matrices. I attach two manuscripts from this North American region that may help update this manuscript and fill knowledge gaps or at least provide insight as to what knowledge gaps remain in this study area.
, , and . 2020. Browsing and fire decreases dominance of a resprouting shrub in woody encroached grassland. Ecology 101( 2):e02935. 10.1002/ecy.2935
Raynor, E.J., Joern, A. and Briggs, J.M. (2015), Bison foraging responds to fire frequency in nutritionally heterogeneous grassland. Ecology, 96: 1586-1597. https://doi.org/10.1890/14-2027.1
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors made the improvements to the manuscript necessary for publication.
