Digital Mapping of Habitat for Plant Communities Based on Soil Functions: A Case Study in the Virgin Forest-Steppe of Russia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Digital Mapping of Biological Habitat Soil Function: A Case Study in The Virgin Forest-Steppe of Russia
General Comments
This study modeled and mapped biological habitat, basically plant species diversity, considering variation in topography, soil and climatic variables in the forest-steppe of Central Russia Uplands. It is an interesting study but it suffers heavily due to lack of proper detail in each section of the manuscript. The writing is not well structured and incomplete in most places. Furthermore, an incomplete literature review and poor discussion destroyed the scope of this paper. The paper could not even maintain a flow of ideas throughout which is normally expected in research papers. Authors could have done much better.
Specific comments
1) L28: Where are references 1 to 4? It stated with 5?
2) L29: 100 bacteria or 100 species of bacteria?
3) L55: GNSS reference?
4) L56: Give more detail on DEM generation
5) L60: Runoff? Never talked about it in Introduction.
6) L61,62,63: How are these input parameters generated/compiled?
7) L69: Tyurin method reference?
8) L71,72: Are observational plots and sampling plots the same?
9) Figure 1 and 2 can be combined? I don’t think Figure 1 is even necessary. Can you overlay figure 2a on 2b?
10) L86: SAGA GIS and R reference? Was any specific R package used?
11) L90: Why Landolt ecological indicator?
12) L92: Explain what these indicators tell you?L96: Past program reference?
13) L98: soil variety?
14) L115: did you measure moisture condition?
15) L146: are redistributed runoff and water overflow (figure 4) the same? Why was pasture (3) not recognized in the attribute space (figure 4)?
16) L149: How did you get runoff cut-off value of 80 mm?
17) L170, 171: is it only topography that determines soil water regime?
18) Figure 6a, 6b: legend 1 not identified. Same with figure 7
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments on our manuscript («Digital Mapping of Habitat Soil Function: a Case Study in the Virgin Forest-Steppe of Russia»). We deeply appreciate the time and the efforts you’ve spent in reviewing our manuscript. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our manuscript, as well as the important guiding significance to our future researches. We have studied the comments carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly as possible.
General Summary of Response and Changes:
We emphasized the conceptual component of the text in the sections of the introduction, methodology and conclusion. We have more clearly formulated and illustrated the main idea of the article, which is as follows: that the plant species composition is the result of a complex interaction in the sequence: soil forming factor (relief) – soil forming process (redistribution of surface runoff) - soil properties (water and air regime) - soil function (habitat) - species composition of vegetation. The established interconnections between the vegetation and soil moisture characteristics is a tool for modeling and predicting the plant species composition due to climate change.
Other responses to the comments and the revisions made to the manuscript are listed below point by point.
1) L28: Where are references 1 to 4? It stated with 5?
References are given in alphabetical order (not in accordance with the mention in the text). We revised it and now it is complement to instruction for authors.
2) L29: 100 bacteria or 100 species of bacteria?
Species of bacteria, but we revised the introduction and deleted this information
3) L55: GNSS reference?
Two Stonex S9III+ GNSS receiver were used. In fixed RTK regimes the positioning accuracy of horizontal coordinates is 8 mm, vertical coordinates - 15 mm. About 10 000 of points with accurately defined coordinates and height, were used for digital elevation model (DEM) creation. The DEM resolution is 2.5m, that is equal to distance between points.
4) L56: Give more detail on DEM generation
The ordinary kriging method was used for DEM creation [Oliver, Margaret A. & Webster, Richard. Springer International Publishing, 2015, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-15865-5]. It was completed in SAGA GIS. Parameters of calculation are: search distance – 100 m, max of points in search distance – 60, variogram approximates by 4th degree polynomial function.
5) L60: Runoff? Never talked about it in Introduction.
After revision, it is mentioned in introduction, that surface runoff is a main soil forming process
6) L61,62,63: How are these input parameters generated/compiled?
The parameters are the slope steepness, horizontal and vertical curvature, the amount of excess precipitation, infiltration rate, water diffusion coefficient, surface roughness coefficient [24]. Three first parameters are calculating in GIS by standard methods [Neteler, Markus; Bowman, M. Hamish; Landa, Martin; Metz, Markus (2012). "GRASS GIS: A multi-purpose open source GIS". Environmental Modelling & Software. 31: 124–130. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2011.11.014]. Other four parameters are equal for the study area and introduced into the model as constant. The amount of excess precipitation and infiltration rate were taken from regional literature [The agrophysical characteristics of the soils of the steppe and dry steppe zones of the European part of the USSR, 1977, Moscow (In Russian)]. Water diffusion coefficient and surface roughness coefficients were compiled from [Šustić D., Tadić Z., Tadić L., Kržak T. Hydrologic and hydraulic analysis of less studied watershed, Energy, №1, 2008 and Koco Š. Simulation of gully erosion using the SIMWE model and GIS, Landform Analysis, Vol. 17, pp. 81–86, 2011].
7) L69: Tyurin method reference?
Tyurin method is a standard method, that is described in [Arinushkina E.V. Guide on Soils Chemical Analysis. Мoscow, 1962, p. 475 (in Russian)]
8) L71,72: Are observational plots and sampling plots the same?
All geobotanical descriptions have been carried out on sampling plots. We replaced «observational plots» by «sampling plots».
9) Figure 1 and 2 can be combined? I don’t think Figure 1 is even necessary. Can you overlay figure 2a on 2b?
We consider, that figure 1 is necessary for understanding of regional specific of topography, so we saved it.
10) L86: SAGA GIS and R reference? Was any specific R package used?
SAGA GIS was used for DEM creation and topography features calculation. We added a reference to the text: [Conrad, O., Bechtel, B., Bock, M., Dietrich, H., Fischer, E., Gerlitz, L., Wehberg, J., Wichmann, V., and Böhner, J. (2015): System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA) v. 2.1.4, Geosci. Model Dev., 8, 1991-2007, doi:10.5194/gmd-8-1991-2015]. The maps evaluation was completed in R, packages ‘MASS’ (linear discriminant analysis) and ‘Ithir’ (accuracy assessment).
11) L90: Why Landolt ecological indicator?
Ecological indicator scales are widely used in geobotanical researches. The purposes of plant communities’ classification, ecological ordination are more often analyzed in investigations. The plant species of the analyzed communities are most fully represented in the list of species of Landolt ecological indicator values [Landolt, E. Ökologische Zeigerwerts zur Sweizer Flora. Veröffentlichungen des Geobotanischen Institutes der Eidg. Tech. Hochschule: Zurich, Switzerland, 1977; No. 64, pp. 1–208.]. In this work, we apply indicator scales to identify the ecological differences of vegetation component of ecosystems by species composition in the key area.
12) L92: Explain what these indicators tell you? L96: Past program reference?
Landolt ecological indicator scales include values of 8 ecological parameters (moisture, reaction, nutrient, humus, dispersion, light, temperature, continentality). The scales allow us only on the basis of the species composition of the plants to estimate the ecological features of the communities in according to the factors.
We added a reference to the text: Hammer, Ø., Harper, D.A.T., & Ryan, P. D. PAST: Paleontological Statistics Software Package for Education and Data Analysis. Palaeontologia Electronica, 2001, vol. 4(1), 1–9.
13) L98: soil variety?
We added the word "properties" - to make the subtitle more precisely.
14) L115: did you measure moisture condition?
Yes. The water content in 1m layer of soils was measured at the beginning of growing season. It was found, that average water content in chernozems is 280 mm, in phaeozems – 340mm.
15) L146: are redistributed runoff and water overflow (figure 4) the same? Why was pasture (3) not recognized in the attribute space (figure 4)?
Yes, runoff and water overflow are the same. The figure was changed.
At figure 4 were recognized not landuse types, but vegetation types, that are different by humidity. Landuse types were recognized by 1st axis of NMS-ordination.
16) L149: How did you get runoff cut-off value of 80 mm?
At run-off value about 80 mm vegetation there’s a border, at that xero-mesophytic phytocoenosis (#1) change to mesophytic (#2) (see figure 3).
17) L170, 171: is it only topography that determines soil water regime?
At the local area with homogeneous deposits and the soil water regime determines only by topography.
18) Figure 6a, 6b: legend 1 not identified. Same with figure 7
Legends to figures are given in figure captions. The same with fig. 7. Legend to it has been a little bit changed.
We have uploaded the revised manuscript that is the same as the original one, except that some parts are coloured to make the revisions notable. Once again, thank you for your really valuable and helpful comments on our manuscript and the time you’ve spent in reviewing our manuscript. We hope you will be satisfied with the revisions for the original manuscript.
The authors acknowledge anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to improve this paper.
Sincerely,
Lozbenev N. I.,Smirnova M. A., Bocharnikov M.V. and Kozlov D.N
Reviewer 2 Report
This ms is an orignal descriptive contribution because it aims to identify the habitat from main soil factors and vegetation description to determine the spatial heterogeneity of the soil function on a key site (35 hectares), soil and geobotanical descriptions.
However, several concepts are not well used and understood. Soil biological habitat is not scientifically clear. Here authors focused on vegetation and no on soil biodiversity. Habitat is more just and specified vocabulary in ecology. Habitat is a set of the place of environmental conditions in which particular organism lives and adapt the situation accordingly. Authors should replaced "Soil biological habitat" by "habitat".
Introduction should totally be revised. L 27-29 this part is too general and off topic. Authors should specified that soil factors play an important role in generating and maintaining plant diversity given as they focus here on vegetation.
Knowledges on spatial relationships between soil factors, soil functions and plant communities should be presented in the introduction to increase the visibility of this ms.
The surface runoff values were modelled by SIMWE. Why did you use SIMWE? Why did not use VSMOD?
Relationships between soil factors, soil functions and plant communities structure should be better higlighted in NMDS to response to ms objectives. A table presenting plant species composition of communities is recommanded.
Discussion should be revised by including soil-vegetation interactions to map soil functions.
Conclusion or discussion should include perspective. Plant traits characterisation of vegetation could be developped to examine impact of soil and vegetation types on soil functions.
"Soil biological habitat function map allows us to predict the species composition" this sentence is not just because stochastic factors and light influence vegetation structure.
Have good revision
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments on our manuscript («Digital Mapping of Biological Habitat Soil Function: a Case Study in the Virgin Forest-Steppe of Russia»). We deeply appreciate the time and the efforts you’ve spent in reviewing our manuscript. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our manuscript, as well as the important guiding significance to our future researches. We have studied the comments carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly as possible.
General Summary of Response and Changes:
We emphasized the conceptual component of the text in the sections of the introduction, methodology and conclusion. We have more clearly formulated and illustrated the main idea of the article, which is as follows: that the plant species composition is the result of a complex interaction in the sequence: soil forming factor (relief) – soil forming process (redistribution of surface runoff) - soil properties (water and air regime) - soil function (habitat) - species composition of vegetation. The established interconnections between the vegetation and soil moisture characteristics is a tool for modeling and predicting the plant species composition due to climate change.
Other responses to the comments and the revisions made to the manuscript are listed below point by point.
This ms is an original descriptive contribution because it aims to identify the habitat from main soil factors and vegetation description to determine the spatial heterogeneity of the soil function on a key site (35 hectares), soil and geobotanical descriptions.
However, several concepts are not well used and understood. Soil biological habitat is not scientifically clear. Here authors focused on vegetation and no on soil biodiversity. Habitat is more just and specified vocabulary in ecology. Habitat is a set of the place of environmental conditions in which particular organism lives and adapt the situation accordingly. Authors should replaced "Soil biological habitat" by "habitat".
Introduction should totally be revised. L 27-29 this part is too general and off topic. Authors should specified that soil factors play an important role in generating and maintaining plant diversity given as they focus here on vegetation.
Knowledges on spatial relationships between soil factors, soil functions and plant communities should be presented in the introduction to increase the visibility of this ms.
We fully accept your comments on the introduction and revised this part of the manuscript
And we also replace "Soil biological habitat" by "habitat"
The surface runoff values were modelled by SIMWE. Why did you use SIMWE? Why did not use VSMOD?
We used SIMWE because it has a good quality of calculation and available in open-source soft GRASS GIS.
Relationships between soil factors, soil functions and plant communities structure should be better higlighted in NMDS to response to ms objectives.
The relationships are presented in figure 4, where it is shown, that axis 2 of NMS ordination and runoff rate divide plant communities in two groups by the humidity rate. It is even better highlighted in figure 4, where it is shown, that in concave relief forms the water inflow increases the moisture reserve in the 1-meter layer of soil at least for 60 mm and determines the formation of typical mesophytic plant communities.
A table presenting plant species composition of communities is recommended.
We tried to include a table to text, but it seemed to be too huge, so we saved previous variant, that you may watch species composition in 3.2. The species composition at sampling plots is presented in supplementary materials ‘Lozbenev_etal_soil_and_veg_data.xls’
Discussion should be revised by including soil-vegetation interactions to map soil functions.
We hypothesized, that the plant species composition is the result of a complex interaction in the sequence: soil forming factor (topography) – soil forming process (redistribution of surface runoff) - soil properties (water and air regime) - soil function (habitat) - species composition of vegetation.
Conclusion or discussion should include perspective. Plant traits characterisation of vegetation could be developped to examine impact of soil and vegetation types on soil functions. "Soil biological habitat function map allows us to predict the species composition" this sentence is not just because stochastic factors and light influence vegetation structure.
We fully accept your comments on the perspectives and revised this part of conclusions
We have uploaded the revised manuscript that is the same as the original one, except that some parts are coloured to make the revisions notable. Once again, thank you for your really valuable and helpful comments on our manuscript and the time you’ve spent in reviewing our manuscript. We hope you will be satisfied with the revisions for the original manuscript.
The authors acknowledge anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to improve this paper.
Sincerely,
Lozbenev N. I.,Smirnova M. A., Bocharnikov M.V. and Kozlov D.N
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors response to the comments are acceptable. However, I highly recommend for a professional English edits before it is accepted.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your recommendation and the time you’ve spent in reviewing our manuscript. We have already completed the professional English editing provided by Soil Systems journal, MDPI (https://susy.mdpi.com/user/pre_english_article/status) in January. We suppose, that after editing our English was improved. If not, could you please indicate: it is necessary to correct the entire text, or some individual parts so that we can pass this information to the service for re-editing?
Sincerely,
Lozbenev N. I., Smirnova M. A., Bocharnikov M.V. and Kozlov D.N
Reviewer 2 Report
This ms was improved. However, several of my comments were not included.
Introduction is to large and should only focus on soil habitat function studied in this ms.
"biological soil habitat" is still cited in the text.
Perspective is too poor. How could you improve your method from trait based approach see Kervroedan et al. 2018 ?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your valuable and very helpful comments on our manuscript and the time you’ve spent in reviewing it. The responses to the comments and the revisions made to the manuscript are listed below.
This ms was improved. However, several of my comments were not included.
We tried to take into account all your comments, apparently, some (except for "biological soil habitat"), we did not fully understand previously.
Introduction is to large and should only focus on soil habitat function studied in this ms.
We shortened the introduction and tried to focus on soil habitat function studied in our research; We also added some new references.
"biological soil habitat" is still cited in the text.
Indeed; we have deleted the word “biological” from the phrase.
Perspective is too poor.
We expanded the research perspectives and indicated that our methodological approach allows mapping different soil habitat areas and thus can be used in agro-landscape engineering: crop species selection for planting and herbaceous hedges designing due to their moisture needs. Future works should include these relationships between crops, landforms and soil features in precision agriculture management in forest-steppe to maximize the biological production and reduce environmental risk. The revealed links between the regional climatic data and plant species composition due to topography and soil features could also be used in modeling and predicting the plant species composition due to climate change in virgin landscapes.
How could you improve your method from trait based approach see Kervroedan et al. 2018
Thank you for the link to this interesting study. We consider the trail based approach in the discussion. In our work we did not conduct a special study on the plant morphological traits; but on the whole, the mesophyte communities include more herb and Carex species wit bigger leaf area than plants in of xero-mesophyte phytocenoses; so, the plants of mesophyte phytocenoses could increase hydraulic roughness and sediment retention in comparison with the plants of xero-mesophyte phytocenoses. We also provided data on plants root systems and discussed its impact on soil erosion.
We have uploaded the revised manuscript that is the same as the original one, except that some
parts are colored to make the revisions notable. Once again, thank you for your comments on our manuscript and the time you’ve spent in reviewing it. We hope you will be satisfied with the revisions for the manuscript.
Sincerely,
Lozbenev N. I., Smirnova M. A., Bocharnikov M.V. and Kozlov D.N
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
I specified in my two reviews that "biological habitat soil function" did not appropriate for this ms. Authors did not examine soil biological properties in this study. The study of vegetation type in relationships with soil functions does not allow to use "biological habitat soil function" concept. "biological habitat soil function" expression was deleted in this text but is still presented in the title.
However, approach and objectives of this ms are interesting and originals to bring new knowledge in soil-vegetation interactions.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your valuable comment on our manuscript.
Indeed, it is more correct to use the term “habitat for plant communities soil function” as it used in the recent publications:
Greiner, L., Keller, A., Grêt-Regamey, A., & Papritz, A. (2017). Soil function assessment: review of methods for quantifying the contributions of soils to ecosystem services. Land Use Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.06.025
Drobnik, T., Greiner, L., Keller, A., & Grêt-Regamey, A. (2018). Soil quality indicators – From soil functions to ecosystem services. Ecological Indicators. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.06.052
Haslmayr, H. P., Geitner, C., Sutor, G., Knoll, A., & Baumgarten, A. (2016). Soil function evaluation in Austria - Development, concepts and examples. Geoderma. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2015.09.023
Therefore, we changed the title of the article to: “Digital Mapping Of Habitat For Plant Communities Soil Function: A Case Study In The Virgin Forest-Steppe Of Russia”
The study of the soil-vegetation interactions characterizes the features of the habitat for plants soil functions. We added this thesis in the introduction and provided links.
In the text of the manuscript we have added “for plants communities” to the phrase “habitat soil function”.
We have uploaded the revised manuscript that is the same as the original one, except that some
parts are colored to make the revisions notable. Once again, thank you for your comments on our manuscript and the time you’ve spent in reviewing it. We hope you will be satisfied with the revisions for the manuscript.
Sincerely,
Lozbenev N. I.,Smirnova M. A., Bocharnikov M.V. and Kozlov D.N
Round 4
Reviewer 2 Report
This ms was improved.
It is important to differentiate between the two notions: soil function and habitat.
"Soil habitat for natural plant communities soil function" should be replaced by "habitat for plant communities based on soil functions" or "habitat for plant communities in relationships with soil function"
L 60 soil function (habitat for plants). Soil function is a different notion that habitat. In some sentence it's not necessary to specify habitat for plants as the title and objectives are currently clear.
Conclusion should be better written. Perspective is too large. "crop species selection for planting" Here authors could develop perspective of this approach on spatial structure of ecosystem services,...
Have good continuation
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for the time you spend on our article.
We have completed revision of phrases, related with soil function, basing on you comments. Moreover, we revised conclusions and added reference:
49. Adhikari K., Hartemink AE. Linking soils to ecosystem services—A global review. Geoderma, vol. 262, 2016 pp. 101-111, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2015.08.009
Sincerely,
Lozbenev N. I., Smirnova M. A., Bocharnikov M.V. and Kozlov D.N
