New Approaches to Tracking Southern Pine Health: Forecasting Southern Pine Beetle Outbreaks Using Pheromone-Baited Traps, Detection Surveys and a Hazard Rating Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript presents an extensive overview of historical data collection about SPB outbreaks occurrence through Southern U.S. over 4 decades, and explores a method to integrate these datasets to improve prediction and risk assessment models, which are ready to inspect through a public web tool.

Overall, I found this manuscript to be well written and very interesting, and I want to thank the Authors for their very nice work. I really think that the efforts in integrating all the existing historical datasets on SPB outbreaks in a comprehensive and consistent way to improve the efficiency of prediction models and risk assessment models are very valuable. I believe that the approaches that the Authors present may be used to guide further efforts in improving forest pest outbreaks predictions and risk mapping by putting together the often very diverse but long-term pest outbreaks datasets which form the inventories of many Forest Services and Countries.
I particularly appreciated the possibility to visualize the prediction and risk assessment outputs directly through a public web-tool, which I believe to be a very valuable tool for people involved in forest health management, and could be of interest also to the overall public.

Even though the background, aims and the overall approach are well presented, I do believe that the manuscript could benefit from some revision in the text structure, especially within the M&M section. I found it to be excessively narrative, and a bit confusing in conveying the actual datasets used. I think that with some rearrangement between Introduction and M&M the readability and comprehension will be improved. I would probably suggest to include a bit more references to recent studies, as I saw that the majority of the references are quite outdated. On the one hand, this is reasonable since old evidence, datasets and models were presented, but on the other hand, I think that more could be said (for example regarding the prediction/risk models or aerial/satellite methodology) and there could be a chance to improve the reference list with more recent studies. This could also provide a better idea of how this study fits within the current scientific work about prediction and risk mapping.

I left specific comments for the Authors within the manuscript pdf version.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a professonally well-written paper by experts, also native American speakers. It reports on a new model of area-wide prediction of hazard of a key forest pest, particularly devastating in Southern US, a bark-beetle, the southern pine beetle (SPB) Dendroctonus frontalis. Actually, four models were developed, corresponding to the four main host pine tree species of SPB. Actual data fit well to predictions, which show the stregth of models.

The whole paper from Introduction through MM, Results and Discussions to Summary and Conclusions is nested in a wide literature background, giving a detailed historical overview. This is at least as important as the new model itself.  Both lines seems to be equally valuable. This makes the impression of a review-paper, rather than a specific research paper. Also the type of article is rather a review, than an article. Therefore it should not neccesseraily be broken into the usual structure of article (Intro, MM, R and D, etc). It seems that each major chapters have their own arch of this by itself.

My minor remarks aim just to spice the paper with some technical details of monitoring, probably interesting for potential users of the new model.

These are:

2.1.3. Satellite Imagery (page 6): This chapter is one of the core chapters, as here a short overview is given of remote sensing, by satellites.  In some parts more specific details were welcome. Such a key issue is how can drough-suffered stands be separeted from those affected by rust disease, or by SPB, or by other bark beetles species. Careful selection of adequate Hyper- or Multispectral Vegetation Indices can probably support the probabilty of reliable interpretation. These possibilities should, at least briefly, be discussed here.

2.2. Development of a Pheromone Trap-Based Prediction System (page 9): Right here a separate subchapter should be included describing the traps, lures and trapping method. Although some basic information is given in the last para of Introduction, such important parameteres, as the enantiomeric composition of compounds (each are chiral – do racemic mix work optimal?), dose of baits (or emission rates / day) would be useful. Were inner walls of the funnels lubricated for most effectively capture SPB? How were captured SPB preserved in the collecting jar for the next check? Positioning of baits to trap body were also useful information (to which funnel, center or rimp?). This could also be illustrated by photos. Location of traps in the stands should also be described (right at the trunk, or in a distance) (photo). What was the protocol of checking traps and counting captures SPB? In case of host plant volatiles were the sex of captures SPB, at least for a sub-sample determined? If so, did sex ratio bear some value for forecast? And more importantly, were any automatic counter used for counting incoming SPB?

Author Response

Please see attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I thank the Authors for their work and for their consideration of my comments, and I am satisfied with their answers and with the new version of the manuscript. I endorse the publication of the manuscript in the present form.