Spatiotemporal Distribution Characteristics of Fire Scars Further Prove the Correlation between Permafrost Swamp Wildfires and Methane Geological Emissions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The permafrost serves as a great carbon pool due to its storage of the largest amounts of carbon storage among various elements in the terrestrial ecosystems. However, the stability of this carbon pool becomes fragile in the context of increasing anthropogenic activities and climate warming. The occurrences of wildfires in permafrost cause lots of emissions of greenhouse gas, such as methane. In this paper, the correlation between climate change and regional methane emissions under the influence of wildfires had been systematically studied in permafrost regions in XiaoXing’an Mountains. In general, this paper is highly interesting, since the authors make sweeping statements as to the long-term interactions of wildfires and permafrost over varying topographic and surface types based. Moreover, it reveals the multi-interactions among permafrost degradation, climate change, regional methane emissions, and wildfires. Some concerns are listed in the following:

1. Line 60 in Page 2: I would suggest the authors reword ‘improper use of fire’ to explicitly mention that this is an anthropogenic source, whereas the others are environmental.

2. Figure 1: I suggest changing the colors used in this figure; it is quite hard to interpret the distribution of permafrost in Figure 1b, and the sources of the permafrost distribution in Figure 1a should be noted. 

3. Figure 2: All text starting with the phrase “this area is a swamp with high surface soil moisture should be moved into the main body of text. 

4. Line 206 in Page 6: citations are needed for the claim that SWIR is sensitive to newly burned land. 

5. Line 90 in Page 2: What were the stated study requirements? 

6. Line 301 in Page 10: “as shown in Figure 6b, the terrain of the study area is characterized by high altitudes in the west and low altitudes in the east”: Figure 6 does not show this. 

7. Line 336 in Page 11: “Therefore, there was a short period of decline in humidity in the study area in early April.”: I do not find the argument presented by the authors convincing to explain this drop in humidity. Were any independent measurements of air/surface temperature, snow cover, soil moisture, etc., used to validate this hypothesis? 

8. Line 367 in Page 12: I do not understand what is being said here. What upper and lower limits are the authors referring to? Limits of what? 

9. Line 560 in Page 17: Can you explain in detail how you got this number, because I'm still confused about it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Review ms#1868597

The aim of the current article was to investigate the causal mechanisms underlying fire occurrence and ecosystem carbon dynamics in boreal and Arctic permafrost regions in the context of temperature changes, based on the relationship between wildfires, climate, and local methane emissions in permafrost regions. The study is interesting, well written, and well communicated. My suggestions to improve the manuscript are provided below. 

-        I suggest shortening the Abstract section to 200 words maximum, according to the journal’s requirements.

-        The references should follow the numbering style (please see journal’s requirements) avoiding exponents.

-        L171 Please correct the reference style.

-        L235 Please add the relevant reference.

-        I wonder if the simple correlation analysis is reasonable in this case since time series are involved (measurements during the period 2017-2021). An alternative solution would be a novel approach using “rmcorr” (Repeated Measures Correlation in R Cran for example) or something similar. A short explanation of how this critical issue is addressed would be helpful for the readers.

-        L278 Please correct the reference style.

-        L290 I suggest avoiding any reference in the results section.

-        L301 Please see the previous comment.

-        References section. Please use the relevant abbreviations for the journals.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Please see attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I found appropriate responses to all of my concerns on the manuscript. I suggest including the authors’ response to my concern on the 2009 permafrost data into the discussion as it is useful information. The manuscript revision is mostly well-presented, though I believe a careful grammatical review is warranted. There is no other significant concern on this promising study.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestion, we revised the Discussion to include the issue of the temporal disparity between the 2009 permafrost data and wildfire data, which is a key issue we need to address going forward. (Lines 647-656).

Author Response File: Author Response.doc