Tree Species Diversity and Stand Attributes Differently Influence the Ecosystem Functions of Pinus yunnanensis Secondary Forests under the Climate Context
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article "Tree-species diversity and stand attributes differently influence ecosystem functions of Pinus yunnanensis secondary forests in climate change" has a potential to publish in Sustainability.
In the discussion, you were compared your results with a study conducted in global dryland ecosystems (line 303-306). I wonder that in other forest ecosystems or in primary forest ecosystems, the finding will be the same or different with your work, please clarified.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: The article "Tree-species diversity and stand attributes differently influence ecosystem functions of Pinus yunnanensis secondary forests in climate change" has a potential to publish in Sustainability.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your comment. We do hope to publish it in Sustainability.
Point 2: In the discussion, you were compared your results with a study conducted in global dryland ecosystems (line 303-306). I wonder that in other forest ecosystems or in primary forest ecosystems, the finding will be the same or different with your work, please clarified.
Response 2: We have only compared our results with in study in global dryland ecosystems. It will be interesting to have comparison study with other forest ecosystems or even primary forest ecosystems. We will try to seek the similarity or difference in our further studies. Thank you very much.
Reviewer 2 Report
1. All variables need to be explicitly describe in detail and how such values were obtained.
2. The writers need to describe (and analyze if needed) each of the study area to give idea for the readers to understand whether there are any different between the the plotsuch as numbers of species, individuals, variables that were use for the relationship analyse.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: All variables need to be explicitly describe in detail and how such values were obtained.
Response 1: Thanks for the comments and sorry for the incomplete. We have described how we quantify all variables in line 171 – 180 except MAT and MAP.
Point 2: The writers need to describe (and analyze if needed) each of the study area to give idea for the readers to understand whether there are any different between the the plotsuch as numbers of species, individuals, variables that were use for the relationship analyse.
Response 2: Thanks for your comment. We will supplement qualitative description of the study areas in the manuscript with your suggestion. The field surveys covered four different types of Pinus yunnanensis-dominated forest zones, i.e. Southeast Yunnan karst mountain valley forest zone (Qiubei), Southwest Yunnan middle mountain forest zone (Shidian), Basin valley forest zone of central Yunnan Plateau (Shuangbai), and P. yunnanensis primary forest zone in Northwest Yunnan (Yunlong).
Reviewer 3 Report
Reviewer comments to "Tree-species diversity and stand attributes differently influ- 2 ence ecosystem functions of Pinus yunnanensis secondary for- 3 ests in climate change" by Lei Wang and colleagues.
This study explores how seven forest ecosystem functions, including Above ground biomass from height-diameter allometric correlations, and six indicators of soil fertility (Soil organic content, soil nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and their ratios) are interrelated with climatic metrics in secondary forests dominated by a Pine species from Yunnan China.
Using multivariate approaches, mainly structural equation modeling, the authors describe the networks of associations between traits. Their main results are that mean annual temperature (MAT) and precipitation (MAP) determine overall functions, including ABG and soil properties. Their results are relevant to understanding the abiotic factors controlling biomass and soil production in secondary forests.
The article is well written and clear, the rationale is correct to the best of my knowledge, as well as the statistical analyses. I have thus few comments, mostly aiming to improve the clarity of the article, but not implying flaws in design or in interpretation.
1. The title indicates climate change, but the correlations are made using historical records, without implying displacement or any other effect of current climatic changes, therefore the title should only indicate climate, but not climatic changes.
2. There is a psychological flaw in the figures. They are exactly the same template, only varying in the quantities, even using the same colors. This causes to readers fatigue, and the most relevant messages are lost in the abundance of graphic elements. My suggestion is to use the figures only for overall ecosystem function, for Above-ground functions, and for belowground functions (and possibly send figures 4 to 9 to an electronic appendix). In this way, the most critical information will be easily captured by the audience.
3. For the rest of the traits. I was expecting that any analysis or figure would provide information on the variability in the measured functions across the four study sites. There is no analysis or figure in this regard. I would invite authors to include either an ANOVA describing how the measured traits and functions vary across sites and across plots within sites. This information would be useful to understand the variability of the data, as currently only the SEM graphics are presented, and no indication of spatial variability can be found, although this would be relevant, given the strong correlations of functions with MAP and MAT.
4. Maybe to accompaning the ANOVA comparison, a spatial inference of variability between sites would be interesting. I would suggest attempting to include three white and black maps of the sites within Yunnan (and referring to a small inset to locate Yunnan within China), and atop the Yunnan map, the location of the plots as circles. The color of the circles may vary from blue to red, indicating the minimum and maximum function values (again, using Overall functionality, AGfunct. and BG func.)
I hope these comments would help to improve an already interesting and valuable document.
Sincerely,
Author Response
Point 1: The title indicates climate change, but the correlations are made using historical records, without implying displacement or any other effect of current climatic changes, therefore the title should only indicate climate, but not climatic changes.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your comment. We will change the title to “Tree-species diversity and stand attributes differently influence ecosystem functions of Pinus yunnanensis secondary forests under climate context”.
Point 2: There is a psychological flaw in the figures. They are exactly the same template, only varying in the quantities, even using the same colors. This causes to readers fatigue, and the most relevant messages are lost in the abundance of graphic elements. My suggestion is to use the figures only for overall ecosystem function, for Above-ground functions, and for belowground functions (and possibly send figures 4 to 9 to an electronic appendix). In this way, the most critical information will be easily captured by the audience.
Response 2: Thanks for the suggestions. We have moved figures 4 – 9 to appendix. More information can be find in Table S2.
Point 3: For the rest of the traits. I was expecting that any analysis or figure would provide information on the variability in the measured functions across the four study sites. There is no analysis or figure in this regard. I would invite authors to include either an ANOVA describing how the measured traits and functions vary across sites and across plots within sites. This information would be useful to understand the variability of the data, as currently only the SEM graphics are presented, and no indication of spatial variability can be found, although this would be relevant, given the strong correlations of functions with MAP and MAT.
Response 3: Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, we should provide information on the variability of measured functions across four studied sites. We have added nine new figures in the appendix.
Point 4: Maybe to accompaning the ANOVA comparison, a spatial inference of variability between sites would be interesting. I would suggest attempting to include three white and black maps of the sites within Yunnan (and referring to a small inset to locate Yunnan within China), and atop the Yunnan map, the location of the plots as circles. The color of the circles may vary from blue to red, indicating the minimum and maximum function values (again, using Overall functionality, AGfunct. and BG func.)
Response 4: Thanks for the suggestions. We have made new figures showing locations of all site and the relevant values for overall functionality, above-ground functionality, and below-ground functionality. But we did not do it in a GIS platform though we include latitude and longitude in the plot. We have added all three new figures in the appendix.
