Analysis of Selection-Cutting Silviculture with Thujopsis dolabrata—A Case Study from Japan Compared to German Plenter Forests

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Already the first sentence: "selection cut is reported from Europe"? Yes,  selection silvicultural system has been used in some places in Europe for more than 150 years, so it sounds strange when authors write "it is often reported".

It is very misleading to compare completely different subjects such as Thujopsis stands in northern Japan vs. Picea/Abies stands in Bavaria. Arguably, it has also no potential benefits, there can be no useful results.

See I could compare for example Larix stands with Fragaria (strawberry). What is the use? And yes, there will be significant differences in various indices.

As much as I like the axis Germany – Japan, I do not consider the framework of the manustript useful. Maybe you can keep the comparison of your results to plenterwald scheme (Fig. 7) but I would not construct the manuscript on this base -> title change + major changes in approach.

Fortunately, it is only 1 of 4 main aims of the study, and the other aims seem much more sensible.

Overally, the topic is very interesting and it seems there has not been any such study.

I think the manuscript needs thorough review by authors, text needs to be smoothened, add citations of all previous relevant works on Thujopsis (on the expense of citing forestry legislation problems in Germany), and in this way, the quality of the manuscript can be considerably increased.

I am missing structural and diversity indices, which would be very interesting for comparison of the two differently managed plots. Instead of comparing it to Germany, it would have been interesting to include a plot managed under clear-cutting silvicultural system

Also, only two plots of 30 x 30 m is the bare minimum, fitting more into some conference contribution

Conclusion needs to be completely rewritten as it doesn't make sense.

I appreciate sound text about Thujopsis, the historical information abut sites and the very own effort to develop such a study. Therefore, I suggest major revisions of the manuscript

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

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Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer no1 for the very detailed comments and the suggestions on how to further improve the quality of the paper.

Many thanks for the positive and well balanced remarks (4x “Can be improved” out of 6 remarks), that encourage us to proceed.

The authors accepted (ok) most of the remarks and integrated them. Few are commented (comment), where we deviate slightly from the suggestions of the reviewer:

Please find our remarks and improvements in the attached files.

S. Hein

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Journal: Forests (ISSN 1999-4907)

Manuscript ID: forests-2475794

Title: Comparative Analysis of Selection-Cut Silviculture with Thujopsis dolabrata in Japan and German Plenter Forest: Current Situation, Structural Dynamics and Future Perspectives

 

Overall  Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Regarding the single tree selection cutting system (or continuous cover forestry) in Thujopsis dolabrata forests, this manuscript may be interesting to the relevant researchers who deals with similar issues such as silviculture, forest growth and yield, and silviculture especially in the region of Japan. Overall, the manuscript contents were acceptable to me. Also, I appreciate the valuable long-term measurement data. However, I am concerned about the number of sample plots. Just one plot cannot be represented or generalized readily. Additionally, from my point of view, authors did not fully utilize the data characteristics. That is, authors could have analyzed the stand- and tree-level characteristics over time because one of the most advantages in this data is the long-term measurement. Regarding this suggestion, see my specific comments. Still, I evaluate this manuscript can be proceeded depending on the weights on the number of samples in this target journal. Accordingly, I suggested comments to update the manuscript, but note that some of the suggestions can be regarded as a matter of opinion. I wish the manuscript idea and results will be helpful in the field and this topic.

I hope that this manuscript can be improved based on peer-review’s comments. My specific comments were provided in detail as follows.

 

Kind regards,

 

Reviewer

 

 

Point 1.

In Title and keywords, wouldn’t it be better to use “selection cutting” and “continuous cover forestry” instead of “selection cut” and “continuous cover forest”?

 

Point 2.

Introduction

In addition to the advantages and characteristics of selection cutting, wouldn’t it be better to shortly include the definition of selection cutting (or continuous cover forestry) by comparing the clear-cutting (rotation forestry) in the first or second paragraph of Introduction? It could be a matter of opinion as authors heavily described the cutting system in methodology in section 2.2., though.

 

Point 3.

Line 224: what is o. b.? outside bark? it should be described clearly.

 

Point 4.

Materials and methods and section 3.2.

I recommend authors to include the summary statistics of stand- and/or tree-characteristics over time. For examples, authors can include the dbh, height, number of trees, basal area, site index along with volume.

 

Point 5.

Results 3.2. Figure 2.

Although both managed and unmanaged plots were not able to be presented from the early 1930s, it may be interesting to see the distribution change from the first measurement for managed stands, e.g., plot 12-3.

 

Point 6.

Results 3.4 and Figure 5.

Instead of showing one-time slenderness in 2019, it will be much better to see the change of slenderness over time since 1995. It can be tree-level as shown in Fig. 5. Or it can be shown with plot-level using boxplot or line plot over time. It must present more information.

 

Point 7.

Results 3.5. and Table 3.

These days, the issues about the biomass or carbon stock are heavily dealt with. Why don’t you include the analysis about the biomass or carbon along with stand volume? If available, I recommend including the issue together.

 

Point 8.

Figure 6 and stocking issue.

Since the authors try to compare the two stands by management, I think it would be also interesting to see the stacked volume by growing stock, thinned stock, residues, and mortality between unmanaged stands and managed stands throughout all series.

 

Point 9.

Discussion

Regarding the selection cutting systems in Europe, I recommend checking the recent publications from Northern Europe where many related articles has been published such as Finland and Sweden.

 

 

Point 10.

Overall

I feel there are lack of analytic results regarding the change of stand characteristics although authors could have described the merits of the long-term measurement data. I encourage authors to include more results which can display the trend or change as I mentioned in earlier comments.

Author Response

The authors thank reviewer no2 for the very detailed comments and the suggestions on how to further improve the quality of the paper.

Many thanks for the positive and well balanced remarks (only “Can be improved/ minor”), that encourage us to proceed.

The authors accepted (ok) most of the remarks and integrated them. Few are commented (comment), where we deviate slightly from the suggestions of the reviewer.

Please find our detailed comments point by point in the attached file.

S. Hein

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you to authors for revised version of their interesting study. I will limit my comment to the Conclusion, which was commented rather than rewritten.

Indeed I did not mention particular issues with it. In last paragraph, authors writing about natural disasters and landslides, as well as "Matsukawa’s concept may significantly contribute as a valuable alternative in fulfilling the protective functions with reduced risks for disaster prevention".

Wherever I go in Central Europe, I see continuous forest cover on the slopes. So what are we talking about? It's just not an alternative as it is commonly used, no further potential in combating climate change.

Conclusion should be based on the results of the study. You should conclude it from the results. Not talk about something completely different. The problem is that I could say the same about the previous paragraph.

On the other hand, there is not a single word about Thujopsis dolabrata in the conclusion - its prospects of survival based on the inventory, effects of the presented management on its production and relation to other species - this is what authors could focus the conclusion at. I really think the Conclusion should be rewritten in order to sum up the introduction, results and discussion.

Thank you, I hope you find the comment useful.

Author Response

Dear Editor,

we carefully revised our ms. The last remaining reviewer pointed to "must rewrite conclusion". Therefore we erase the old version of the conclusion section, rewrote almost all parts (we kept only the first introductory lines), reduced the content, concentrated on critisim, further paths and referred to some ideas of T. dolabrata from the introduction and results section.

We hope to satisfy reviewer no1 this time by carefully following his/her remarks.

We hope get get the final approval.

Kind regards

Sebastian HEIN - for the author group

Author Response File: Author Response.docx