Traditional Fire Knowledge: A Thematic Synthesis Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The submitted paper presents a systematic review of the literature about traditional fire knowledge using a thematic synthesis approach. Authors detect a gap in current research on local fire knowledge among non-indigenous populations. As a general comment, the topic is of interest to the readership of Fire, but some changes are needed to improve the manuscript. Please find below some general comments regarding the current version of the paper.

General comments

1. The title is very general. It would be more related to the objective of the paper.
2. The introduction should better justify the authors' claim that the assimilation between traditional knowledge and indigenous knowledge deprives rural communities in Europe of the recognition of traditional knowledge. I understand that there is sufficient literature dealing with the traditional use of fire in rural communities in Europe (maybe in other languages difference to English, as it is mentioned by the authors) and the great attention of the literature to indigenous knowledge is most likely due to the large amount of research focused on the United States and Australia (64.6% of the reviewed papers-line 456 and line 468). All these studies would be analyzing traditional fire use in different realities. Hence, I do not understand the research question that the authors pose "Is the comparison between the attention paid to indigenous fire knowledge and that paid to non-indigenous local fire knowledge clearly more favorable to the former? Favorable in what sense? Is this really the objective of the paper or what it is mentioned in the title, a more general literature review about traditional fire knowledge?
3. Please, could you please clarify what you understand by indigenous and non-indigenous communities? In the case of Western Europe, I suppose you are referring only to non-indigenous communities since, as far as I know, the only indigenous communities in Europe are mostly located in the Arctic region. Throughout the article you also distinguish between indigenous and local. Please unify the terminology used.
4. Part of the background is already in the introduction. The authors should improve the introduction by better connecting it to the following section of Background.
5. Table 1 refers to research questions, which are neither from the article itself nor from the articles analyzed. The authors should think about modifying the title of this table, as well as the explanation included. A suggested title would be "Elements to characterize the literature review".

Minor comments

Line 390 mentioned 25 years and in line 444 26 years.

Line 401: What do you mean by “reviewer …”, and “independent reviewer ”?

Figure 2: replace Austría with Austria.

Repeated references (33 and 43)

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is interesting and adds a new perspective to the literature on social dynamics of prescribed fire. I suggest including section headings in Section 2 to break up the literature review more finely to clarify topics. As it stands now, it is a little difficult to follow the arguments in Section 2. In the Results section, it would also be great to have a table, similar to Table 1. Research Questions, that shows how the findings correspond to each question.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is well written and compiled the data on Indigenous knowledge across the world. The authors have done a tremendous job of systematizing the data and undoubtedly have made the worldwide sophistication of traditional fire knowledge better known.

The reviewer believes that the paper has a merit to be published with minor revisions. 

There are some minor comments and suggestions that the reviewer would be thankful if the authors can either address in the paper for more clarification or directly respond in the rebuttal. The comments are listed below as follows:

1. Figures 2 and 3 essentially contain the same information, only the way of presentation changes: from a diagram to a geographic distribution and marking on the map. 
Maybe it makes sense to implement an additional legend in Figure 2 and thereby combine the information. In any case, this is only my recommendation. 

2. Table 3 shows an extensive sample, but in the reasoning the authors refer to the works of several authors from this list, with citations. In this regard, it is not quite clear why all 30 personalities are given in the table, moreover - in the text of the article their geographical affiliation is mentioned and general conclusions are drawn based on the categories of research areas of these works. It is worth paying attention to this point. 

3. Table 4 has no column captions. It is necessary to think about how to convert it to a more informative and clear form. 

4. Some inaccuracies in the text, such as: the use of round brackets citation format, incorrect form of mentioning the author and quoting his work, etc. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf