Non-Additive Effects of Forest Litter on Flammability
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Non-additive effects of Sydney Coastal Dry 2 Sclerophyll Forest litter on flammability
Gormley et al. characterized the physical and chemical attributes of litter flammability using several flammability metrics and robust statistical and modelling techniques. Such thematic is within the scope of Fire and would be interesting to the readers of the journal.
The manuscript is well structured and describes properly the method applied and results found. I have made a few suggestions and comments below, which in my opinion will improve the quality of the manuscript:
Line 2: Suggestion - Remove “Sydney Coastal Dry Sclerophyll” from the title. In my opinion this will enhance the interest of readers that do not have Australia or this forest as study area.
Lines 29-30: Please convert the value to American dollar.
Line 32: Please explain the meaning of ‘Black Saturday’.
Lines 88-90: Please provide a map showing the spatial location of these two sites.
Line 99: A picture of one plot in the map figure suggested above would help the readers to understand the method applied.
Line 107: Please define FHS and PCS.
Line 133-134: Please consider adding a figure showing each litter component described in this sentence.
Line 142: Please check if the tables of the manuscript are according to the journal style.
Lines 164-169: A figure showing the experiment design would also help the readers to understand the experiment.
Lines 170-174: Please define the variables mentioned in here.
Lines 195-197: This sentence was previously written in Lines 45-47.
Line 212: Please move “3. Results” to a new line.
Line 228: Table 5 is presented before Table 4.
Lines 231-242: Please consider inserting a table, perhaps as supplementary material, describing and defining all flammability metrics analyzed in the manuscript.
Line 272: Table 7 is only shown in topic 3.4. Please remove “and 7” and “and Rofe Park, respectively” from this sentence.
Line 393: Please change “Table” to “Tables”.
Line 436: Please add the reference number for Zhao et al. (2016).
Line 451: Please clarify “but the list of is not comprehensive”.
Line 510: Question - Is it possible to expand the results found to a regional scale using orbital data?
Line 529: Could the results found be applied to other vegetated areas that are imposing fire management techniques? (See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.04.004; https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13118; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire1030049).
Lines 552-554: It is not clear so far how the land managers will use this information. How the results will be disseminated to them and how the results will be applied in practice?
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic is interesting for the journal's readership. However, in my opinion some issues should be addressed and improved before the manuscript can be published.
- Abstract: It is too simple. Generally, you just show your work is important and novel, but never give your conclusion. Please add some interesting findings from your work.
- It is better to give an image to illustrate the location.
- Please give more sentences to discuss the uncertainty about your results.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
- Use USD not AUD.
- Prepare a diagram of the sampling strategy otherwise it is difficult to understand the methodology of the study.
- Abstract should be revised based on research findings with conclusion not only focused on the literature and methods.
- What is ‘semi-quantitative’ and ‘quantitative’ methods? discuss it in the methodology section.
- Lines 99-108 should be goes to the sampling not in the study site.
- No need to use ‘0’ in Tables 1 & 2.
- Use recent published documents/articles particularly in the Introduction section like references 1, 2, 5, 6, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, etc.
- Please write a paragraph about the recent forest/bush fires of Australia.
- I have not found research objectives and research questions/hypotheses of the study. It is completely missing.
- Sub-sections 2.2 and 2.4 need to be shortened.
- Why you choose two 30 years old unburnt sites (1990 and 1996) for study on the propagation of fire. I’m confused or you failed to understandable it to me the justification of site selection.
- Write “Results” before starting the results and findings.
- It is very difficult to trace the results of long tables like in Tables 5, 6 &7. Please think about it. Maybe these tables goes to the supplementary materials or something else.
- No need to give a long description of the results in sections 3.3 and 3.4. Shorten these sections or sub-divided these sections.
- Tables 2, 8 & 9 are less important to show in the main findings, these maybe goes to the supplementary materials.
- Use 4.1, 4.2, 4.3… in the Discussion section.
- No need to discuss again results in the Discussion section like Tables 4 & 5.
- In my opinion, it is unnecessary to write a long discussion. Discussion might be shortened without any sub-headings.
- The Conclusion is too small for an article, it deserves a comprehensive description of the findings. Conclusion is missing the integration of the results into policy context for suggestions or recommendations.
- References: recheck the format of referencing.
- Minor spell check required. Minor editing of English language and style required.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Please see the attached review document. I recommend this article for publication provided the following comments are properly addressed.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Generally, the paper is good. However, the author should consider more about the uncertainty and the use of these kinds of methods.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for addressing my all comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript for publication in the journal of "fire". I'm very pleased to see that you did very hard work to improve the manuscript. Now, I have no further comments on this manuscript. However, if you do minor English editing it would be very helpful for the reader. Also, please check the uniformity of the referencing style of the journal.
Best regards.
Reviewer 4 Report
I recommend the article for publication.
