A Tool for the Assessment of Forest Biomass as a Source of Rural Sustainable Energy in Natural Areas in Honduras

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript “A TOOL FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF FOREST BIOMASS AS A SOURCE OF RURAL SUSTAINABLE ENERGY IN NATURAL AREAS IN HONDURAS” deals with the assessment of forest biomass in the chosen country, and will be interesting for Sustainability readers after revision.

 

Provide a clear purpose for the manuscript.

Please, give the source of the empirical data.

The proposed method is very simple in the reviewed manuscript, please find out a few other publications about the assessment of forest biomass in chosen countries  (literature below).

 

 

The low cognitive value of the manuscript, please enrich the used methods as a purpose of the manuscript.

 

Table 5: Conservation targets – forest – you should avoid the first column because Conservation targets – forest concerns all items.

 

Some specific comments:

145: The pine-oak ecosystem, also known as coniferous forest, is mainly spread – it is not true;

292: Figure 2. forest cover loss in 2014 (in red), and so on – Forest – with a capital letter;

324: rebuild table 5;

325: Table 5 shows that t(…) – The data in Table (…) – will be better;

336: Figure 4: Landscape metrics – redundant, will be removed.

 

Some literature:

J. Banaś, K. Utnik-Banaś, „Using Timber as a Renewable Resource for Energy Production in Sustainable Forest Management”, Energies, t. 15, nr 6, ss. 1–8, 2022.

Yingli Huang, Huiyan Qin and Ying Guan Assessing the impacts of four alternative management strategies on forest timber and carbon values in northeast China, Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 2019, Vol. 34, No. 4, 289–299 https://doi.org/10.1080/02827581.2019.1578894

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The study reported on the tool for the assessment of forest biomass focusing on rural areas of Honduras. Overall the article was written in a very good and proper presentation which guides the reader to understand the whole story of the reported study. A few comments as follows:

1) In paragraph 1 of the Introduction part. Sentence 1 sounds a bit hanging. The author should describe more why using conventional energy would lead to greenhouse gases emission. What kind of 'conventional energy' that the author referring to?

2) The name of the study location Honduras should be mentioned in Figure 1.

3) The Author should give a strong reason why Honduras was selected as the location to be studied. Is it the place has a plenty source of biomass compared to the other location and why pine-oak ecosystem chosen to be focused on in the study?

4) It is suggested beside the pine-oak ecosystem as a biomass source, the author could find another source and compare the finding.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

well done!

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

Dear authors,

The work carried out is interesting and the topic is very relevant but the following points need to be changed:

• The introduction presents some hints related to the importance of the theme, I would advice improvements.
• The discussion section needs to be supported by citations and linked back to the previous sections of the paper.
• The references are not mentioned in the text. You should consider the following authors instructions: “In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation” - https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#preparation;
• Please proofread English in general, some smaller parts could be revised;
• Please rewrite the References Section according to the paper template (for example, for journal articles: Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.)

 

• Line 51: there are two punctuation marks “;”
• Line 54: delete the comma before the point;
• Line 55 -60: It would be beneficial of you add some references in that section;
• Line 57: delete the comma before the point;
• Line 60: delete the comma before the point;
• Line 68: “According to,…”, please insert the reference;
• Line 76: please insert the reference;
• Line 132: please insert the reference;
• Line 139-148: please arrange the paragraph alignment;
• Table 2: use value instead valor
• Line 183: please insert the reference;
• Line 185 – 188: please use the superscript to write the indices: km² not km2
• Regarding Figure 2 and 3: caption of the figures should be typed below the figure;
• Please write the first line of Table 3 without capital letters;
• Please write Table 5 according to the paper template;
• Line 286: please insert the reference;
• Please write the first line of Table 6 without capital letters;
• Line 347: there is a space before the point;
• Line 358: there is a space before the point;

Best wishes!

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors describe in the manuscript an important problem of deforestation of large areas in Honduras and try to find a way to counter this proces. The title of the work is not reflected in the text! The article does not have a scientific character! It is basically just a description of methods for carrying out research into changes taking place in the ecosystem. It is more a research report than a research article.

I find the following deficiencies in the study:

1. There is no clearly stated research hypothesis,
2. The introduction mainly contains generally known facts about climate change and climate summit documents,
3. The results of their research and methods were not confronted with other authors in the Discussion,
4. Most references to bibliography items are missing in the text,
5. No statistical analysis of the results.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors.

The proposed methodology, which is based on satellite image processing, ecological integrity assessment, and identification of species of interest for forest biomass conservation and production, is confusing. In fact, the state of the art related to the proposed theme was not observed in the introduction. Furthermore, in the results and discussions section, we did not observe the comparison of results with similar studies.