European Beech Forests in Austria—Current Distribution and Possible Future Habitat
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)
A very brief article on an interesting topic, that requires a more detailed description of the methodology and supplementing the results.
Is the paper really about beech forests, or it is about beech species in Austrian forests? I would suggest consider changing the title.
Table 2: Inventory cycles are ordered from the last to the first, it should be the other way around - as in table 3
Section 2.2.:
Both models - growth model CALDIS and timber-market model FOHOW2 should be described in more detail.
Extrapolation of climate scenarios till 2150 should be described in more detail, and displayed on a line graph of mean temperature (and precipitation?).
For more complex evaluation of two analyzed drivers of future habitat and proportion of beech (1. climate, 2. forest management) one, by the way most realistic scenario is missing, and should be added: RCP 4.5 with changing species composition.
Table 5: List of species for different mean temperatures should contain proportions of species. Group "conifers" should be specified by species.
Section 3. Results:
Figure 1 displays current state of species composition. For reader very interesting would be similar graph (graphs) for estimated future state(s). At least for RCP 8.5 and changing species composition.
Figure 2: I would suggest complete for all scenarios.
Figure 3: A line fot the scenario RCP 4.5 Change species should be added. It is assumed that it will be significantly different from RCP 8.5 BAU.
Section 5: Conclusions
Conclusions should summarize own ressults obtained, not review of state of the art. Hence at least the first and second points from conclusion I would suggest remove.
Conclusion should clearly specify how two analyzed drivers (climate change and forest management) affect future species composition (with focus on beech).
Conclusions should not contain a statements not supported by the reported results, as in the case of vulnerability to some abiotic damages and storms.
Author Response
A very brief article on an interesting topic, that requires a more detailed description of the methodology and supplementing the results.
Is the paper really about beech forests, or it is about beech species in Austrian forests? I would suggest consider changing the title.
-> thanks for the remark. We have included 'Austria' in the title in order to clarify the regional scope of our analysis.
Table 2: Inventory cycles are ordered from the last to the first, it should be the other way around - as in table 3
-> we have changed the order of columns.
Section 2.2.:
Both models - growth model CALDIS and timber-market model FOHOW2 should be described in more detail.
-> We have added information on both models. For the even more interested reader add'l refs are provided. The interaction of the two models is hopefully sufficiently clear.
Extrapolation of climate scenarios till 2150 should be described in more detail, and displayed on a line graph of mean temperature (and precipitation?).
-> the extrapolation is briefly explained (logit function; noise added ...). An additional graph with temperature and precipitation has been added.
For more complex evaluation of two analyzed drivers of future habitat and proportion of beech (1. climate, 2. forest management) one, by the way most realistic scenario is missing, and should be added: RCP 4.5 with changing species composition.
--> Unfortunately, this scenario was not part of our project CareForParis. The project had the current conditions and the inevitable climate change as base line (RCP 4.5 BAU). Under these conditions we did not see the need to a forced change of tree species. - The backbone of our project was the severe climate change. Experts are discussing the need for a change in tree species. Our intention was to show what this means in a scenario. -- We are fully aware that a full-factorial project would have been better. However, we needed to make choices to align the man power with politically relevant topics.
Table 5: List of species for different mean temperatures should contain proportions of species. Group "conifers" should be specified by species.
--> The request fits very well with a suggestion of the Academic editor. The caption of the table now holds this information.
Section 3. Results:
Figure 1 displays current state of species composition. For reader very interesting would be similar graph (graphs) for estimated future state(s). At least for RCP 8.5 and changing species composition.
--> we have added the requested figure. It is indeed enlightening.
Figure 2: I would suggest complete for all scenarios.
--> we have added a panel to the graph (RCP 8.5, BAU). Basically, the information has not changed and the graph is indeed quite similar to RCP 4.5 BAU. The additional graph clearly shows how slowly natural processes are acting, partiucularly when a huge ressource like the Austrian forest (10^9 m3 stem wood) are turned over in 100-year cycles.
Figure 3: A line fot the scenario RCP 4.5 Change species should be added. It is assumed that it will be significantly different from RCP 8.5 BAU.
-> as mentioned above: we don't have it.
Section 5: Conclusions
Conclusions should summarize own ressults obtained, not review of state of the art. Hence at least the first and second points from conclusion I would suggest remove.
Conclusion should clearly specify how two analyzed drivers (climate change and forest management) affect future species composition (with focus on beech).
Conclusions should not contain a statements not supported by the reported results, as in the case of vulnerability to some abiotic damages and storms.
-> we have deleted the two conclusions that are possibly true, but not subject of our analysis. Instead, we have added new conclusions that directly derive from our analysis.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Although the revision has been made yet I did not receive a detailed report responding to each other the comments raised by the 1st round of review comment.
No further comment at this 2nd review.
no further comment.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, we have indeed provided a point by point response to the valuable comments. We had received several reviews that were pointing into a similar direction. All of the suggestions were included in the new version of the text. I am sorry when our responses ended up someplace on the web, but did not reach the reviewer.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The major issues were addressed, so the paper can be accepted in its present form
Author Response
thank you very much. We have made further amendments at the request of an additional reviewer.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)
Thank you for corrections and explanation, no more questions.
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
Comments for author
The authors present an analysis of European beech's current and future distribution in Austria using national forest inventory data and a poorly defined simulation experiment. From the manuscript, the importance of the research is not understood, nor is it possible to understand the details of the experiment since the salient details are contained in other papers cited, thus making reading difficult and not very smooth, due to the continuous references to other works without a minimum of explanation. Comments for each section follow:
Abstract
There are no results, discussion, or conclusion in the abstract, making impossible to say why your research should be of interest in the field.
Line 6: How did the simulation was performed? with which model?
Line 8: which RCP or SSP did you use? Should be stated in the abstract
Lines 11-17: these are just some of the species characteristics. Why put them here in the abstract?
Introduction
There is a lack of reference (i.e., lines 25, 27, 74-80, and more) and in particular international reference especially on the climate change effects on beech and spruce. There is no data to support the author's claims. There is not even a brief description of the approaches and techniques used by the authors to carry out their experiment.
Materials and methods
Section 2.1: Missing important details to understand the types of data taken from the national forest inventory (NFI). Neither has some summary data on Austrian forests.
Section 2.2: it is very inconvenient to refer whole sections of the article to already published papers. It makes reading extremely difficult and requires too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. In addition to the fact that much of the literature cited is in the native language, which is difficult to access for all readers. This stands both for the climate data used and for the "simulations". What did you simulate? How? Which protocol did you use? it is the least to spend a few words on this. How did you analyze the results? did you use some software? Which one?
Results
There are literally no data shown in this section, just three figures. There are a lot of sentences that would better suit the discussion section. Also, Figure 2 is small and unclear, there is no scale bar, and no changes are present in panel (a) under the climate scenario RCP 4.5, which is at least strange to me that the spatial distribution of beech remains identical from 2010 to 2150.
Discussion
There is a lack of comparison data from other works, nor have the results of this study been contextualized and related to existing knowledge.
Minor typos detected
Reviewer 2 Report
The article is an interesting overview and discussion of European beech in Austria. However, it does not have the character of an original scientific article. The methodology of the scenarios is explained only superficially and the results could be relevant, but the discussion about them is insufficient.
Even if we would acknowledge the quality of the discussion, it is not complete, especially in the areas that the authors promise in the introduction and abstract: forest policy and innovation. The authors promise that the discussion will be about forestry policy instruments to ensure an increase in the share of beech in Austria. That discussion is very insufficient. In addition, it would be interesting to discuss how the behaviour of the addressees of forest policy instruments would change as a result of the forestry policy instruments. In my opinion, even the basic literature from Austria is flawed in this area. Another very insufficiently discussed area is innovation, innovative behaviour of wood processing companies, innovation system associated with the support of beech processing. There is also a lack of citation of research from the Austrian environment.
Reviewer 3 Report
Changing tree species composition is becoming a popular adaptation measure in facing extreme climatic conditions. This paper emphasizes that the deep rooted European beech forest can promote re-circulation of nutrients that the shallow rooting system forest is not capable of and can play a more important role in the future of adaptive forest management.
1. What is the main research question raised by this study? Can the author clearly elaborate the research question in the Introduction section?
2. What is the research method used by this study? Simulation? Can the author also describe its methodology more clearly in the Introduction section? In particular, how can simulation can help future forest management to combat climate change challenges?
3. Figure 2 with the suggested future scenario of forest species alternation is clearly simulated and demonstrated with image depiction. Yet what is more critically in practice is what kind of obstacles (discussed in the extant literature? Is there a literature review section in this paper? ) will be encountered or resolved in order to reach this simulated preference. Is it possible that this paper can re-arrange the section 4 Discussion to reflect those potential socio-ecological challenges? In other words, at the current writing, Section 4 is too long and not very organized. It might be difficult for reader to be enlighten by the rich suggestion listed in this section.
4. In the section of conclusion, there is no mentioning of the simulation which should be the most important research method and results yielded by this study. Can the authors re-organized the findings to be described in the conclusion?
No comment.
