The Response of Vegetation to Regional Climate Change on the Tibetan Plateau Based on Remote Sensing Products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled ‘Response of vegetation to regional climate change on the Tibetan Plateau based on remote sensing products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model’ used different models to estimate vegetative properties such as GPP over the Tibetan Plateau.  

The topic of the manuscript is interesting for the Remote Sensing’s readership, as satellite-derived information is still gaining interest, and deriving more accurate models to predict future changes in soil, plant, and atmospheric variations is still of high value.

The English should be also checked, there are some places it is difficult to read and hard to understand at times, and there are many typos present in the manuscript. E.g. Lines 28, 32, 63-64, 213, 438

My only concern about the paper is that the used statistical data does not provide general information on how satisfying the simulated data were. If the authors would use PBIAS instead of the BIAS or add RSR (the ratio of the RMSE and standard deviation of measured data), the values would be more meaningful of how satisfying the model simulations are. Currently, there are statistical numbers, which are very useful, but mainly provide relative differences between model runs, and do not tell if the simulations were very good, satisfactory, or even not satisfactory.  

 

I have added some minor comments to the paper:

Line 49.  What is considerate amount? Line 52 the same question.

Line 69. References 14 to 18 should be written as 14-18.

Line 117. “Followed by the work of Deng et al. [24], in which we improved” even if it was the work by the same authors the sentence should avid personal statements. Suggestion: Followed by the work of Deng et al. [24], in which the soil moisture and … were improved”

Line 179-181. The sentence should be rewritten.

Table 5. The site's name should be at the top, or the sites should be separated because now the Haibei GPP seems to correspond to the Dangx site.

 

Figure 10. The names of the colored lines should be added to the figure caption. 

Author Response

Submission to: Remote Sensing

Manuscript Number: Remotesensing-1772099

Article Title: Response of vegetation to regional climate change on the Tibetan Plateau based on remote sensing products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model

“Ans” is the abbreviation of “Answer” in the reply letter. 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript titled ‘Response of vegetation to regional climate change on the Tibetan Plateau based on remote sensing products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model’ used different models to estimate vegetative properties such as GPP over the Tibetan Plateau.  

The topic of the manuscript is interesting for the Remote Sensing’s readership, as satellite-derived information is still gaining interest, and deriving more accurate models to predict future changes in soil, plant, and atmospheric variations is still of high value.

Ans. Thanks for your appreciation and suggestions. We appreciate Reviewer #1 for providing the very useful comments. We have addressed these comments in the following responses and revised the manuscript accordingly.

The English should be also checked, there are some places it is difficult to read and hard to understand at times, and there are many typos present in the manuscript. E.g. Lines 28, 32, 63-64, 213, 438

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, mistakes have been revised in the manuscript.

My only concern about the paper is that the used statistical data does not provide general information on how satisfying the simulated data were. If the authors would use PBIAS instead of the BIAS or add RSR (the ratio of the RMSE and standard deviation of measured data), the values would be more meaningful of how satisfying the model simulations are. Currently, there are statistical numbers, which are very useful, but mainly provide relative differences between model runs, and do not tell if the simulations were very good, satisfactory, or even not satisfactory.  

 Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, we used PBIAS instead of BIAS in Table 5 and Table 6, and revised description in the manuscript.

I have added some minor comments to the paper:

Line 49.  What is considerate amount? Line 52 the same question.

 Ans. Streamflow of the Yangtze River originate from the TP is not clear, thus we used “considerate amount” to express. To avoid confusion, we revised the second “considerable” to “vital” .

Line 69. References 14 to 18 should be written as 14-18.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have revised “14, 15, 16, 17, 18” to “14-18”.

Line 117. “Followed by the work of Deng et al. [24], in which we improved” even if it was the work by the same authors the sentence should avid personal statements. Suggestion: Followed by the work of Deng et al. [24], in which the soil moisture and … were improved”

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have revised it in Line 117-118.

Line 179-181. The sentence should be rewritten.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have revised it in Line 183-185.

Table 5. The site's name should be at the top, or the sites should be separated because now the Haibei GPP seems to correspond to the Dangx site.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have moved site’s name to the top in Table 5.

Figure 10. The names of the colored lines should be added to the figure caption. 

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added the colored lines to the figure caption in Figure 10.

Reviewer 2 Report

This research compares remote sensing and model data on the vegetation responses to climate change over the Tibetan Plateau. The comparison and results look comprehensive, but some critical information is missing. I suggest a few minor revisions and clarifications before considering publishment.

 

1.       Line 175: spatial resolution is 0.05°, but a coarser temporal resolution is 8 days,

“coarser” than what?

2.       2.2.3 Meteorological data

More information is suggested here. E.g. What is the data provider? Is the data available online or just for internal use?

3.       Line 213: DEM

Which DEM data was used?

4.       Figure 2

Systematical errors at Dangx and Haibei sites during July ~ September. More analysis is needed here, especially for the reasons.

5.       Figure 3

Any clues for the overestimation of GLASS data at Dangx and NIRv data at Haibei?

6.       Figure 5 & Figure 7

 

The authors mentioned that GLASS data has spatial integrity. What happens to the gaps in the map?

Author Response

Submission to: Remote Sensing

Manuscript Number: Remotesensing-1772099

Article Title: Response of vegetation to regional climate change on the Tibetan Plateau based on remote sensing products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model

“Ans” is the abbreviation of “Answer” in the reply letter. 

This research compares remote sensing and model data on the vegetation responses to climate change over the Tibetan Plateau. The comparison and results look comprehensive, but some critical information is missing. I suggest a few minor revisions and clarifications before considering publishment.

 Ans. We appreciate Reviewer #2 for providing the very useful comments. We have addressed these comments in the following responses and revised the manuscript accordingly.

1. Line 175: spatial resolution is 0.05°, but a coarser temporal resolution is 8 days,

“coarser” than what?

Ans. Compared to the observed carbon flux, temporal resolution of FLUXCOM GPP is coarser. To avoid confusion, we decided to delete it and revised in Line 179.

2. 2.2.3 Meteorological data

More information is suggested here. E.g. What is the data provider? Is the data available online or just for internal use?

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added the information in Line 217-219. The data provider was the National Meteorological Information Center, China Meteorological Administration (http://data.cma.cn/), and the data was available online.

3. Line 213: DEM

Which DEM data was used?

Ans. Global 30 Arc-Second Elevation (GTOPO30) was used in order to weaken the effects of elevation on the interpolation precision of temperature and precipitation, and have added the information in Line 219-221.

4. Figure 2

Systematical errors at Dangx and Haibei sites during July ~ September. More analysis is needed here, especially for the reasons.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added more analysis in Line 365-368.

5. Figure 3

Any clues for the overestimation of GLASS data at Dangx and NIRv data at Haibei?

Ans. According to Reviewer#1, we used PBIAS instead of BIAS in Table 5 and Table 6, According to Table 6, PBIAS of GPP between GLASS and observation data at Dangx is 151.4%, and PBIAS of GPP between NIRv and observation data at Haibei is 118.7%, which indicated the overestimation of GLASS data at Dangx and NIRv data at Haibei.

6. Figure 5 & Figure 7

The authors mentioned that GLASS data has spatial integrity. What happens to the gaps in the map?

Ans. The gaps in the map indicated there is a missing data.

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, this is a clear, concise and well-written manuscript. The introduction is pertinent and based on interesting papers.

The procedure is described in details and gives sufficient information on the study logic.

In addition, the results are clear.

Kind Regards

Author Response

Submission to: Remote Sensing

Manuscript Number: Remotesensing-1772099

Article Title: Response of vegetation to regional climate change on the Tibetan Plateau based on remote sensing products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model

“Ans” is the abbreviation of “Answer” in the reply letter. 

Overall, this is a clear, concise and well-written manuscript. The introduction is pertinent and based on interesting papers.

The procedure is described in details and gives sufficient information on the study logic.

In addition, the results are clear.

Ans. Thanks for your appreciation and suggestions.

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

please find my comments on your manuscript.

Kind regards

Reviewer

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Submission to: Remote Sensing

Manuscript Number: Remotesensing-1772099

Article Title: Response of vegetation to regional climate change on the Tibetan Plateau based on remote sensing products and the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model

“Ans” is the abbreviation of “Answer” in the reply letter. 

General comments:

Ans. Thanks for your appreciation and suggestions. We appreciate Reviewer #4 for providing the very useful comments. We have addressed these comments in the following responses and revised the manuscript accordingly.

 

• the article must be formatted and edited according to the journal template and style.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, the manuscript have been formatted and edited according to the journal template and style.

 

• English in many places is poor and of wrong structure. A lot of grammatical errors. Therefore, I suggest that the authors benefit from a professional proofreading service before resubmitting the manuscript.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have asked help from MDPI English editing and revised the manuscript.

• units must be provided every time any equations are introduced in the manuscript.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added units in the manuscript.

 

1. Subsection 2.1 is too brief and must be expanded. Provide more detailed information on the investigated study sites. The presented figure 1 is missing references to the data on land cover. There are no elevation values shown as well as the location of the TP on the World map.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added more information of study area in the manuscript. In addition, to avoid confusion, we used elevation map instead of land cover map in Figure1.

 

2. Table 1: Why have you chosed study sites mostly covered with alpine meadow? How does it correspond to an alpine desert spot?

Ans. The vegetation type on the TP mainly covered by alpine meadow and sparse alpine grasslands. Due to the high elevation and harsh natural environment, there are few carbon flux observation sites on the TP, thus, we chosed long-term observations at Maqu, Haibei, and Dangx to validate the performances of remote sensing products and dynamic vegetation model.

 

3. Subsection 2.2.3: provide more information on the data quality control.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added more information in Line 217-219.

 

4. Subsection 2.5: this subsection must be expanded. All statistical metrics must be expressed mathematically and referenced on why you have decided to use them. Also, all metrics must be evaluated according to some reference values (please look at the papers that I suggest to you, where you can find more on that).

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added mathematical expressions of all statistical metrics in 297-300. It is considered to be unacceptable if PBIAS is greater than 20%. When the Corr is high and the RMSE is low, the simulated is considered robust and more desired.

 

5. Figure 2: the figure is too small to be read.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have revised Figure 2.

 

6. all results must be quantitively evaluated according to the chosen range values (see last comment from Section 2).

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have added it in the manuscript.

 

7. should be “Conclusions” in the subsection name.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have revised it to “Conclusions” in Line 545.

 

8. please list a few major conclusions from your study to highlight them in the discussion.

Ans. We agree with reviewer’s comment and, accordingly, have discussed it in Line 596-599.

 

9. Literature must be formatted according to the journal style. Suggested literature: Impact of the Grid Resolution and Deterministic Interpolation of Precipitation on Rainfall-Runoff Modeling in aSparsely Gauged Mountainous Catchment; Decomposition of the mean squared error and NSE performance criteria: Implications for improving hydrological modelling; Assessing the Effects of

Urbanization on Flood Events with Urban Agglomeration Polders Type of Flood Control Pattern Using the HEC-HMS Model in the Qinhuai River Basin, China.; Review and evaluation of remote sensing methods for soil-moisture estimation

Ans. We have revised Literature according to the journal style.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

I am happy with the changes that you have incorporated into the manuscript. In my opinion, it has been significantly improved and is now ready for being published.

Kind regards

Reviewer