Assessing Context-Specific Factors to Increase Tree Survival for Scaling Ecosystem Restoration Efforts in East Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Do a careful reading for minor English editing -- for example, omission of "be" in line 450 and "is" in line 470.  Also, consider adding an agroforestry common name to one of the species tables.

Author Response

Point 1: Do a careful reading for minor English editing -for example, omission of "be" in line 450 and "is" in line 470. 

Response 1: We have read through the paper for English editing and made appropriate edits. 

Point 2: Also, consider adding an agroforestry common name to one of the species tables.

Response 2: This is a great suggestion. We have added a common name, where available, for each species in Table 2

Reviewer 2 Report

 Land 20

Assessing Context-specific Factors to Increase Tree Survival for Scaling Ecosystem Restoration Efforts in East Africa

I think that a version of this paper needs to be published as the topic is important and there appears to be plenty of data.   To make this paper of higher impact and more useful to the reader it needs some revision to address issues:

Introduction – I would have liked a better and more complete background regarding the literature on the specific questions addressed in this paper. “ how tree seedling planting and management practices influence tree survival across various agroecological conditions and the farmer circumstances in Ethiopia and Kenya, as well as the effect  of socio-economic and farm characteristics on tree survival.”  As it, it is the Introduction has way too much general background on this topic (please reduce) and Introduction does not setup the background for the experiment that was actually implemented.

L152  What is a planned comparison?   Is this an experimental design?  Explain. Were the seedlings given to the farmers?  Where were they grown and what conditions were they in when they arrived at the farms?   Size of seedlings?  Were they planted immediately?   Is there any indication of what motivated these landowners to participate?

Table 1 Were such an array of treatments on each farm?  What is a planned comparison?  What is a typical ’farmer usual hole size’?  five is spelled wrong on watering frequency.  Explain what pruning treatment these might be and why were they pruned.  What chemical fertilizers might have been added and what is an organic fertilizer?  What type of fencing – presumably to keep out ungulates?  Farmer-described soil quality is going to be very vague as most have little understanding of soils.  Somewhere in the Methods it should describe what is being accomplished by digging such large holes – this is a lot of work.   Killing roots of competitors, increasing water infiltration, breaking a hardpan?

L1184-190 It appears that 8 or more species were planted in Kenya – not 7.  For that matter, how were the species selected that were considered in this study?   Was there a bias towards native species for each region?

L194-198  Did anyone check the  conditions of planting and compliance with experimental  instructions and the final data on survival, other than the farmers?

Fig. 2  Please state in the caption what each of the components of this graph are.   Mean, 25 and 75% percentile?  What is the gray shaded area?  Proportion of the data in each survival percentile?  How did the Mwala data of for Mangifera start at 25% survival?

Table 3 I do not understand specifically what variation means in the table.

Table 4 or elsewhere.   Somewhere in the results I would like to see a presentation of odds ratio to see how influential the variables were.

Table 6 Why are not fencing or watering considered in any options?

L329  ‘whether erosion was reported on the farm on seedling survival’  Reword to clarify if this erosion is long term or during the life of the seedling.

330-332 ‘there was a significant relationship between age and, education level of the household head and seedling survival as well as between farm size, the type of land tenure’    This is an experiment first.   These social issues of age and education and presumably gender of the head might reflect the care that they had in tending the experiment.   Is this where this will lead us?   I do not see any other connections.

L422-423  Could you give a more clear description of the source of seedling and their size in the methods.  Were they delivered potted or bareroot?

224-426  “circumstance including their social and economic characteristics and biophysical characteristics of the farm not only influence the adoption of innovative practices but also had effect on the performance of the practices being implemented. “ I did not see how the experiment was specifically set up to test this.  

L462-466 ‘Results of the analysis on species preference by respondents from female headed and male  headed households revealed that choices in the tree species preferred reflected their interest knowledge and experience into the management and use of products from the trees including the  understanding which tree species had a better chance of survival given their current agroecological conditions (Derero et al., 2020).’  We still do not know for sure if the reason is gender bias for specific species or if there is local knowledge as to which species might grow at all in the arid conditions.

Conclusions section needs to be rewritten and shortened to address the issues directly tested in this paper.   The way that it is structured it now points out issues that were never fully described in the paper or were never tested with the experiment and analyses.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

A well written and structured paper.

I have a few minor issues;

Wouldn't it have been better to wait for 12 months rather than assess at 6 months?

Carica papaya isn't really a tree.

In the abstract a planting hole with a diameter of over 4 meters can hardly be considered small.

The formating of table 1, didn't appear well on my screen - it was right justified not left justified

It might have been interesting to see why the farmers were selecting particular species (eg fruit, timber, medicine, fuel etc), and does the intended use influence the care they give them?

Author Response

Point 1:Wouldn't it have been better to wait for 12 months rather than assess at 6 months?

Response 1:The first six months after planting are most critical for survival as seedlings adjust to the new conditions and establish. Thus, planting and management practices have the greatest impact on seedlings at this stage.

Point 2: Carica papaya isn't really a tree.

Response 2: Admittedly, Carica papaya’s trunk is not as woody as other tree species. There is however consensus in the literature that Carica Papaya is a tree. World Agroforestry’s agroforestry tree database defines it as an evergreen, tree-like herb which grows up to 10 m tall.

Point 3: In the abstract a planting hole with a diameter of over 4 meters can hardly be considered small

Response 3: This was a typing error and has been corrected to the right measurements of 30cm diameter by 45cm depth.

Point 4: The formatting of table 1, didn't appear well on my screen - it was right justified not left justified

Response 4: The table has been re-formatted.

Point 5: It might have been interesting to see why the farmers were selecting particular species (eg fruit, timber, medicine, fuel etc), and does the intended use influence the care they give them?

Response 5: We agree. We didn’t conduct extensive qualitative data collection to fully understand the motivation for species preference among farmers and if that affects how they manage the trees. However, since majority of the surveyed households preferred tree species that were commonly found on farms across the study sites, we suppose that the selection is influenced by their knowledge and /or understanding of how to care for the trees and ready market or demand for the tree products.