Village Fengshui Forests as Forms of Cultural and Ecological Heritage: Interpretations and Conservation Policy Implications from Southern China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I enjoyed this paper. I think it is an important topic and one that is understudied for this part of the world. I have some minor suggestions for improvement outlined below.

 

L22- You mention the idea of new institutions here but in the discussion I didn't see many specifics on what those might look like. Is there anything more besides a plant a tree program that might be recommended? Are you recommending a new class of protected areas be created for these specific types of forests? This could be more explicit in the Discussion.

L26 _ found it difficult to make sense of this idea of 'cultural education programs' mentioned here. It seems like if the local people already hold these values then they don't need to be educated about their own culture. Is the issue that there is an erosion of cultural values in these areas with modernization (particularly in younger generations)? I believe this was mentioned somewhere but perhaps go into more detail about how this is playing out and what you learned about this through the interviews.

Along those lines, how much of the threats to these forests are from outsiders or from a top-down source vs. the villagers themselves? Maybe the villagers just need more funding and support for the government to protect their local resources through a community process? To what extent is a top-down approach needed?

L 282- This idea of "clan pedigree" is mentioned several times but is not really described. What is it exactly?

 

Minor points

Line 35- suggest cutting "and etc"

Line 71- here does not mention the interviews

Author Response

Point-by-point responses to the reviewer’s comments on the manuscript

 

The authors would like to thank the editor and reviewers for the careful review of our manuscript and providing us with their comments and suggestion to improve the quality of the manuscript. The following responses have been prepared to address all the reviewers’ comments in a point–by–point fashion. We also asked for professional editing support on language for the whole manuscript.   

 

Reviewer 1

Comment 1: I enjoyed this paper. I think it is an important topic and one that is understudied for this part of the world. I have some minor suggestions for improvement outlined below.

Response: We greatly appreciate your positive comments on our topic selection.

 

General comment 2: L22- You mention the idea of new institutions here but in the discussion I didn't see any specifics on what those might look like. Is there anything more besides a plant a tree program that might be recommended? Are you recommending a new class of protected areas be created for these specific types of forests? This could be more explicit in the Discussion.

Response 2: We do not mention the “new institutions” in the main text. So, we deleted the words “new institution” in the abstract. As suggested, we have provided recommendations regarding to institutional arrangements in the last two paragraphs.

 

Comment 3: L26 _ found it difficult to make sense of this idea of 'cultural education programs' mentioned here. It seems like if the local people already hold these values then they don't need to be educated about their own culture. Is the issue that there is an erosion of cultural values in these areas with modernization (particularly in younger generations)? I believe this was mentioned somewhere but perhaps go into more detail about how this is playing out and what you learned about this through the interviews. Along those lines, how much of the threats to these forests are from outsiders or from a top-down source vs. the villagers themselves? Maybe the villagers just need more funding and support for the government to protect their local resources through a community process? To what extent is a top-down approach needed?

Response: The abstract has been revised as suggested.

   To recognize the value of fengshui forests and to provide institutional supports are also important factors for fengshui forests conservation. As you have mentioned, the traditional belief and information rules in the past have effectively protected the forests. However, nowadays, the young generations do not believe in fengshui as your ancestors. The popular belief of fengshui as superstition also hinter the conservation of fengshui forests. Hence, we recommend that the government should recognize the value of fengshui forests and reassess the value of fengshui in forest conservation.

Following the suggestions, the villagers also need more funding and support for the government to protect their local resources through a community process. This is presented in the second paragraph of Section “5. Discussion and recommendation”.

 

Comment 4: L282- This idea of "clan pedigree" is mentioned several times but is not really described. What is it exactly?

Response 4: We add an interpretation of clan pedigree” (i.e., a book that records the lineage of a family, some of them describing the information on fengshui forests). Line 44.

 

Comment 5: Line 35- suggest cutting "and etc"；Line 71- here does not mention the interviews.

Response 5: We have revised it according to your comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, this is an interesting and well-written paper which I enjoyed reading, but did find it highly descriptive, with inadequate discussion around the implications of the work for policy and practice. This is the key flaw in the paper and needs improving for the paper to be publishable in forests. But there are other matters that also need addressing – including a much-improved final paragraph of the Introduction, a Data Analysis section, and a much-improved ending (conclusions). And related to all this, the title could be amended to also point to ‘implications’ for the conservation of fengshui forests, as it also currently just points to a highly descriptive paper.  

A marked-up version of the paper PDF is attached to assist with the required edits and other comments outlined below.

 

Abstract

Lines 15-16: after ‘Youxi County’ note ‘…in southern China’, and then end this sentence with ‘in this region’.

Line 25: remove the second ‘argues’.

Note that is states interviews with ‘village heads and residents’ – when in the Method section it also mentions interviews with ‘forestry bureau/station staff’, so this will need revising in the abstract.

Overall, it is a good abstract – but the problem is that it states numerous things that the paper doesn’t actually adequately address, and sometimes I question if at all. E.g. ‘the patriarchal clan system’, ‘the fading influence of tradition’ impacting the sustainable management of fengshui forests, how the government should ‘work to promote the preservation of fengshui forests during the development and transformation of rural society’, and that the ‘governments might be able to use cultural education programmes to guide the further planting and preservation’. These all need further development/elaboration in the paper. This relates to the need to go well beyond the ‘description’ of the forests, and further into implications for their future protection and enhancement. Related notes are provided in the final ‘conclusions’ section below.

 

Keywords

Seems to be far too many, would normally be limited to 7 max? Suggest anything already in the title can be deleted, and also removing ‘’forest landscape’, ‘built environment’ and ‘rural landscape’. And change to ‘sacred forest’ and ‘sustainable forest management’.

 

Introduction

Line 34 & 35 (and anywhere else relevant): remove ‘and etc.’ – this is too vague and not good writing. Amend the text accordingly by adding in the ‘and’ before the last point.

Line 41: language edit needed, the highlighted part of the sentence doesn’t make sense. Maybe – ‘…due to their prevalence in the rural landscape and vicinities of human settlements’.

Line 55: a new paragraph, so it needs to be clear. The reference to ‘these forests’ isn’t clear. But the sentence also needs rearranging. Change to – ‘…have helped local people nurture and conserve fengshui forests to achieve….’.

Line 63: language edit needed. Change to ‘…for their preservation’.

Line 65: as per Line 55 comment – change to ‘…to assess the role of fengshui forests in…’.

The last paragraph of the Intro – there is some detail missing relating to context and the overall purpose/implications of the work. I see this last paragraph of an Intro as a key part of any good paper – readers should be able to read this part and immediately get the ‘picture’ of what was done, why, how and the importance/implications of the findings – who the findings are useful for and how, why they are important/novel, and what are the policy/practice implications of the work. So some more needs to be done to improve this key part of the paper.

Re context, see highlight at line 71 – here it needs to introduce the study area/region, so should add in something like ‘using field survey data gathered from 7 villages in Youxi County in Fujian Province in southern China and secondary data, …..’. But then more needs to be said at the end of the current text, relating to the above points on importance of the work. I see a need for this to better link in with the ‘conservation schemes’ part of the title. At present, any relevance to that in the paper is very minor (and far too minor in my opinion to currently justify its inclusion in the title) – so that part of the paper needs more focus. And that needs to be well beyond the current brief ‘descriptive’ notes on a few examples of ‘conservation schemes’ relating to the fengshui forests, and more detail on implications of the findings for the design and implementation of such schemes, some clearer ‘recommendations’.

 

Part 2

Line 179: remove the capitalisation of ‘school’.

Line 82: language edit needed. Suggest changing to ‘In contrast, …’.

Line 87: should this be ‘…Form and Compass schools of…’?

Line 107: ‘they and ‘these forests’ should be made clearer – be specific. Suggest – ‘In addition, ancient Chinese consider the luxuriant trees of village fengshui forests to….’.

 

Part 3 (Method)

Line 120: change to ‘county’.

Line 121: sentence needs reorganising. Suggest – ‘In this study, seven villages – one in each town – were selected for field surveys’.

Lines 121-122: add ‘Village’ after ‘Guifeng’, or change to ‘villages’ after ‘Lingtou’.

Lines 124-124: as per above comment.

Line 125: casual language, needs amending. Change to ‘…distribution enabled evaluation of the potential….’.

Line 130: Fig 1 caption, change to ‘of the seven villages’, and there are alignment issues with the last 2 symbols, need addressing.

Lines 142 and 144: change to ‘Thus, Youxi County within Fujian Province is a suitable….’ And end sentence with ‘…culture of the county and different sub-cultures of the province’.

Line 146: remove ‘two-step surveys’ (not a good description), change to ‘We conducted the field-based surveys in…….’.

Line 148: did the ‘interviews’ also include others? If not, remove ‘included’ and just be clear these were the only interviewee type. But also, it needs to state how many of these interviewees there were.

Lines 153-154: not clear what these ‘four cultural blending areas’ are? Do they relate to the ‘cultural origins’ column in Table 1? The description needs to make this clearer. Also, the same detail on the number of interviewees of each type is needed here. Can add ‘(n=?)’ after each type.

Lines 159 and 160: change to ‘included’.

Line 166: Table 1 needs to be moved to immediately after Fig 1. And remove all italics from the table heading.

A key flaw of the paper is that it currently lacks a ‘Data analysis’ section – which must be included as a new section 3.3. There was, it seems, a lot of interview data (and that will be clearer once we know the numbers of interviewees) – so how was this analysed? Seems it was only qualitative data that was collected? So how was that dealt with to get your results – content analysis, thematic analysis? Manually done or using an analysis program? All key information. Readers must see this – ultimately a good/appropriate method needs to describe the process so that it could be repeated, or essentially readily understood by any reader.

 

Part 4 (Results)

Line 175: change to ‘the’.

Lines 176-177: use the full genus names for all the species listed here.

Lines 179-182: can use just the marked genus names abbreviations here. But need to start the new sentence with the full genus name for ‘Cinnamomum’.

Line 190 (Table 2): ‘Keteleerai fortunei’, and why not the scientific name for ‘Yellow Wolfberry’?

Line 193: change to ‘Appendix A (Figures A1 and A2)’. Also note there is currently no reference to Appendix B (and related figures B1-B3) in the paper – it should either be referred to (to help readers visualise descriptions on the text) or removed.

Line 195: change to ‘…of the Form school of fengshui’.

Line 197: is this a quote from a reference (so would needs a reference and page number) or a quite from an interviewee (so would need to be italicised, and in the method you’d need to note that quotes are presented in italics)? Seems it is likely the former, but it would have been good (and I’d argue it is actually needed) to have included interviewee quotes, as this is a highly qualitative piece of work, and given that many interviews have been undertaken with key people/players in fengshui forest establishment/management etc., their insights would add much richness to the paper. To repeat, I’d like to see quotes included to back up some statements or present other findings.

Line 201: change to ‘upon the dragon vein’.

Lines 202-204: linked to above edit, the ‘dragon hair (fengshui forests)’ needs to be moved to above so that a clearer description of the ‘dragon’s hair’ is provided at its first mention.

Line 205: change to ‘gathering’.

Line 206: remove etc and add in a ‘and’ where needed before the last point (after ‘water’).

Line 208: sudden mention of ‘water tail forests’ with no prior explanation of what these are – that needs to be explained.

Line 211: incomplete text? Suggest changing to ‘In short, water tail forests contribute to a …..’.

Line 213: language edit needed. Should it be ‘…between forested landscapes and the environment’?

Line 218: delete ‘villages’.

Line 219: add ‘The second type of water tail fengshui forest combines…..’. And combine this part with the preceding short paragraph.

Line 228: add ‘Village’.

Line 230: remove italics from Figure 5 heading, and move figures 4 & 5 to after their first mention in the text.

Line 234: species name edit.

Line 248: change to ‘of their ancestral halls’.

Line 259: new paragraph, so it needs to be clearer. Not clear what ‘these villages’ is referring to. Be specific – state the villages in question.

Line 264: just wondered, was the reference to the Wu family meaning to also link to ‘college achievements’?

Line 277: a new paragraph, so also not clear what ‘these rules’ are referring to. Is it ‘Some of the rules for protecting fengshui forests…..’? But then I think there is a disconnect here – are you meaning to refer to the ‘rules’ being ‘severe’? I’d have thought it is the ‘punishments’ that are considered severe? I suggest this needs some rethinking and revising the text accordingly.

Line 285: change to ‘support’.

 

Part 5 (Discussion & Conclusion)

Line 310: suggest deleting reference to ‘significant’ – this is a qualitative study/analysis, so the findings shouldn’t be confused with ‘statistical significance’. I’m not saying this is what you are doing, but the word can suggest that and so best avoided here.

Line 316: change to ‘through’.

Line 328: never start a new paragraph with ‘However,…..’ – related to above points about new paragraphs needing a clear introductory sentence. So either create a new introductory sentence, or just combine this paragraph with the preceding one. The latter would be my recommendation.

But then the paper’s ending with that final paragraph is inadequate. I’ll note some key points that are made in this final section of that paper that are very good, but that I feel need to be further built on/discussed and linked to ‘implications’ that could be added to this final section to give the paper more purpose beyond the ‘descriptive’.

• Line 314-315: ‘how cultural beliefs such as fengshui can serve as effective conservation instruments for small-scale forests’. It is such ‘instruments’ that need to be delved into deeper in this paper – extension and incentive programs for villages/villagers to maintain and enhance their village fengshui forests. There was earlier mention of related types of small-scale forests in other parts of the world – religious forests in Ethiopa etc. The Discussion part of this paper needs to do some linking to the literature from these similar cases, to consider what type of instruments have worked elsewhere and how that might influence processes in China. Currently there is only 1 reference (Chinese) in the whole final section.
• Line 319: ‘to plant fengshui forests’ – with all the rural development going on, more should be said about ongoing establishment of new fengshui forests.
• Line 323: ‘others are popular eco-tourist attractions’ – could this relate to the above point, creating more of these forests, or further promotion to get tourists to them to generate funds for the improved management (and expansion) of these forests? But can more tourists pose a problem for forest health?
• Lines 332-333: final statement about ‘relying on village rules and local customs’ – I see this as a ‘governance’ matter that should be elaborated on in the paper. Linking to international literature on Indigenous/traditional forest governance systems (which includes clan-based decision-making).

Beyond these points, this end part of the paper needs to better link with the statements in the Abstract that are noted above as not currently adequately addressed.

Author Response

Point-by-point responses to the reviewer’s comments on the manuscript

 

The authors would like to thank the editor and reviewers for the careful review of our manuscript and providing us with their comments and suggestion to improve the quality of the manuscript. The following responses have been prepared to address all the reviewers’ comments in a point–by–point fashion. We also asked for professional editing support on language for the whole manuscript.   

 

Reviewer 2

Comment 1: Overall, this is an interesting and well-written paper which I enjoyed reading, but did find it highly descriptive, with inadequate discussion around the implications of the work for policy and practice. This is the key flaw in the paper and needs improving for the paper to be publishable in forests. But there are other matters that also need addressing – including a much-improved final paragraph of the Introduction, a Data Analysis section, and a much-improved ending (conclusions). And related to all this, the title could be amended to also point to ‘implications’ for the conservation of fengshui forests, as it also currently just points to a highly descriptive paper.  

A marked-up version of the paper PDF is attached to assist with the required edits and other comments outlined below.

Response 1: Thanks for your interest in our research. We greatly appreciate your insightful comments. And the method and conclusion part has been largely revised. The title has been changed to “Village fengshui forests as forms of cultural and ecological heritage: Ecological interpretations and conservation policy implications from Southern China.”

 

Abstract

Comment 2: Lines 15-16: after ‘Youxi County’ note ‘…in southern China’, and then end this sentence with ‘in this region’.

Response: We have revised it according to your comments.

 

Comment 3: Line 25: remove the second ‘argues’. Note that is states interviews with ‘village heads and residents’ – when in the Method section it also mentions interviews with ‘forestry bureau/station staff’, so this will need revising in the abstract.

Response 3: We have revised the abstract as suggested.

 

Comment 4: Overall, it is a good abstract – but the problem is that it states numerous things that the paper doesn’t actually adequately address, and sometimes I question if at all. E.g. ‘the patriarchal clan system’, ‘the fading influence of tradition’ impacting the sustainable management of fengshui forests, how the government should ‘work to promote the preservation of fengshui forests during the development and transformation of rural society’, and that the ‘governments might be able to use cultural education programmes to guide the further planting and preservation’. These all need further development/elaboration in the paper. This relates to the need to go well beyond the ‘description’ of the forests, and further into implications for their future protection and enhancement. Related notes are provided in the final ‘conclusions’ section below.

Response: The abstract has been revised as suggested.

 

Keywords

Comment 5: Seems to be far too many, would normally be limited to 7 max? Suggest anything already in the title can be deleted, and also removing ‘’forest landscape’, ‘built environment’ and ‘rural landscape’. And change to ‘sacred forest’ and ‘sustainable forest management’.

Responses 5: Only 7 keywords are now included, and the phrases existing in the title have been deleted as suggested.

 

Introduction

Comment 6: Line 34 & 35 (and anywhere else relevant): remove ‘and etc.’ – this is too vague and not good writing. Amend the text accordingly by adding in the ‘and’ before the last point.

Comment 7: Line 41: language edit needed, the highlighted part of the sentence doesn’t make sense. Maybe – ‘…due to their prevalence in the rural landscape and vicinities of human settlements’.

Comment 8: Line 55: a new paragraph, so it needs to be clear. The reference to ‘these forests’ isn’t clear. But the sentence also needs rearranging. Change to – ‘…have helped local people nurture and conserve fengshui forests to achieve….’.

Comment 9: Line 63: language edit needed. Change to ‘…for their preservation’.

Comment 10: Line 65: as per Line 55 comment – change to ‘…to assess the role of fengshui forests in…’.

Responses 6~10:

  The points from comments 6-10 have been reflected in the manuscript as suggested.

 

Comment 11: The last paragraph of the Intro – there is some detail missing relating to context and the overall purpose/implications of the work. I see this last paragraph of an Intro as a key part of any good paper – readers should be able to read this part and immediately get the ‘picture’ of what was done, why, how and the importance/implications of the findings – who the findings are useful for and how, why they are important/novel, and what are the policy/practice implications of the work. So some more needs to be done to improve this key part of the paper.

Response 11: Lines 233-241 have been added as suggested.

 

Comment 12: Re context, see highlight at line 71 – here it needs to introduce the study area/region, so should add in something like ‘using field survey data gathered from 7 villages in Youxi County in Fujian Province in southern China and secondary data, …..’. But then more needs to be said at the end of the current text, relating to the above points on importance of the work. I see a need for this to better link in with the ‘conservation schemes’ part of the title. At present, any relevance to that in the paper is very minor (and far too minor in my opinion to currently justify its inclusion in the title) – so that part of the paper needs more focus. And that needs to be well beyond the current brief ‘descriptive’ notes on a few examples of ‘conservation schemes’ relating to the fengshui forests, and more detail on implications of the findings for the design and implementation of such schemes, some clearer ‘recommendations’.

Response 12: The paragraph mentioned has been revised as suggested.

 

Part 2

Comment 13: Line 79: remove the capitalisation of ‘school’.

Comment 14: Line 82: language edit needed. Suggest changing to ‘In contrast, …’.

Comment 15: Line 87: should this be ‘…Form and Compass schools of…’?

Comment 16: Line 107: ‘they and ‘these forests’ should be made clearer – be specific. Suggest – ‘In addition, ancient Chinese consider the luxuriant trees of village fengshui forests to….’.

Responses to Comments 13~15: Revision done as suggested.

 

Part 3 (Method)

Comment 17: Line 120: change to ‘county’.

Comment 18: Line 121: sentence needs reorganising. Suggest – ‘In this study, seven villages – one in each town – were selected for field surveys’.

Comment 19: Lines 121-122: add ‘Village’ after ‘Guifeng’, or change to ‘villages’ after ‘Lingtou’.

Comment 20: Lines 124-124: as per above comment.

Comment 21: Line 125: casual language, needs amending. Change to ‘…distribution enabled evaluation of the potential….’.

Comment 22: Line 130: Fig 1 caption, change to ‘of the seven villages’, and there are alignment issues with the last 2 symbols, need addressing.

Comment 23: Lines 142 and 144: change to ‘Thus, Youxi County within Fujian Province is a suitable….’ And end sentence with ‘…culture of the county and different sub-cultures of the province’.

Comment 24: Line 146: remove ‘two-step surveys’ (not a good description), change to ‘We conducted the field-based surveys in…….’.

Comment 25: Line 148: did the ‘interviews’ also include others? If not, remove ‘included’ and just be clear these were the only interviewee type. But also, it needs to state how many of these interviewees there were.

Comment 26: Lines 153-154: not clear what these ‘four cultural blending areas’ are? Do they relate to the ‘cultural origins’ column in Table 1? The description needs to make this clearer. Also, the same detail on the number of interviewees of each type is needed here. Can add ‘(n=?)’ after each type.

Comment 27: Lines 159 and 160: change to ‘included’.

Comment 28: Line 166: Table 1 needs to be moved to immediately after Fig 1. And remove all italics from the table heading.

Response to Comment 17~28: Revisions done as suggested.

 

Comment 29: A key flaw of the paper is that it currently lacks a ‘Data analysis’ section – which must be included as a new section 3.3. There was, it seems, a lot of interview data (and that will be clearer once we know the numbers of interviewees) – so how was this analysed? Seems it was only qualitative data that was collected? So how was that dealt with to get your results – content analysis, thematic analysis? Manually done or using an analysis program? All key information. Readers must see this – ultimately a good/appropriate method needs to describe the process so that it could be repeated, or essentially readily understood by any reader.

Response 29:We add a “3.3. Data analysis” section.

Except for the list of famous and ancient trees, there is qualitative data that was collected. So, we treated these different bodies of original data into a format to explore the research questions posed and arrive at specific conclusions, the treatment measures involved comparison, analogy, induction, and summarization.

 

Part 4 (Results)

Comment 30: Line 175: change to ‘the’.

Comment 31: Lines 176-177: use the full genus names for all the species listed here.

Response to Comment 30-31: Revision has been done as suggested.

 

Comment 32: Lines 179-182: can use just the marked genus names abbreviations here. But need to start the new sentence with the full genus name for ‘Cinnamomum’.

Response 32: We use the full genus names for all the species listed in the text.

 

Comment 33: Line 190 (Table 2): ‘Keteleerai fortunei’, and why not the scientific name for ‘Yellow Wolfberry’?

Response 33: revision done as suggested.

 

Comment 34: Line 193: change to ‘Appendix A (Figures A1 and A2)’.

Response 34: revision done as suggested.

 

Comment 35: Also note there is currently no reference to Appendix B (and related figures B1-B3) in the paper – it should either be referred to (to help readers visualise descriptions on the text) or removed.

Response 35: Appendix B is used in the section “3.1. Study sites” (Line 139) and “4.2. The roles of fengshui culture and ecological thoughts”(Line 214).

 

Comment 36: Line 195: change to ‘…of the Form school of fengshui’.

Response 36: Revision is done.

 

Comment 37: Line 197: is this a quote from a reference (so would needs a reference and page number) or a quite from an interviewee (so would need to be italicised, and in the method you’d need to note that quotes are presented in italics)? Seems it is likely the former, but it would have been good (and I’d argue it is actually needed) to have included interviewee quotes, as this is a highly qualitative piece of work, and given that many interviews have been undertaken with key people/players in fengshui forest establishment/management etc., their insights would add much richness to the paper. To repeat, I’d like to see quotes included to back up some statements or present other findings.

Response 37: We have added the reference for it.

 

Comment 38: Line 201: change to ‘upon the dragon vein’.

Lines 202-204: linked to above edit, the ‘dragon hair (fengshui forests)’ needs to be moved to above so that a clearer description of the ‘dragon’s hair’ is provided at its first mention.

Comment 39: Line 205: change to ‘gathering’.

Comment 40: Line 206: remove etc and add in a ‘and’ where needed before the last point (after ‘water’).

Comment 41: Line 208: sudden mention of ‘water tail forests’ with no prior explanation of what these are – that needs to be explained.

Comment 42: Line 211: incomplete text? Suggest changing to ‘In short, water tail forests contribute to a …..’.

Comment 43: Line 213: language edit needed. Should it be ‘…between forested landscapes and the environment’?

Comment 44: Line 218: delete ‘villages’.

Comment 45: Line 219: add ‘The second type of water tail fengshui forest combines…..’. And combine this part with the preceding short paragraph.

Comment 46: Line 228: add ‘Village’.

Comment 47: Line 230: remove italics from Figure 5 heading, and move figures 4 & 5 to after their first mention in the text.

Response to Comments 38-47: Revision has been done as suggested.

 

Comment 48: Line 234: species name edit.

Response 48: We use the full genus names for all the species listed in the text.

 

Comment 49: Line 248: change to ‘of their ancestral halls’.

Response 49: We have already done what you recommend (from 36-45^th comments).

 

Comment 50: Line 259: new paragraph, so it needs to be clearer. Not clear what ‘these villages’ is referring to. Be specific – state the villages in question.

Response 50: We have changed ‘these villages’ to “Guifeng, Zhongxian and Lingtou villages” (Line 281).

 

Comment 51: Line 264: just wondered, was the reference to the Wu family meaning to also link to ‘college achievements’?

Response 51: We want to express that the Wu family has more successful descendants because of its fengshui forests around their ancestors.

 

Comment 52: Line 277: a new paragraph, so also not clear what ‘these rules’ are referring to. Is it ‘Some of the rules for protecting fengshui forests…..’? But then I think there is a disconnect here – are you meaning to refer to the ‘rules’ being ‘severe’? I’d have thought it is the ‘punishments’ that are considered severe? I suggest this needs some rethinking and revising the text accordingly.

Response 52: the rule has been changed to “punishment” as suggested.

Comment 53: Line 285: change to ‘support’.

Response 53: Revision is done as suggested.

 

Part 5 (Discussion & Conclusion)

Comment 54: Line 310: suggest deleting reference to ‘significant’ – this is a qualitative study/analysis, so the findings shouldn’t be confused with ‘statistical significance’. I’m not saying this is what you are doing, but the word can suggest that and so best avoided here.

Response 54: We have removed it.

 

Comment 55: Line 316: change to ‘through’.

Response 55: Revision is done as suggested.

 

Comment 56: Line 328: never start a new paragraph with ‘However,…..’ – related to above points about new paragraphs needing a clear introductory sentence. So either create a new introductory sentence, or just combine this paragraph with the preceding one. The latter would be my recommendation.

Response 56:We have removed it and thank you for these suggestions.

 

Comment 57: But then the paper’s ending with that final paragraph is inadequate. I’ll note some key points that are made in this final section of that paper that are very good, but that I feel need to be further built on/discussed and linked to ‘implications’ that could be added to this final section to give the paper more purpose beyond the ‘descriptive’.

Response 57:We change the section “5 Conclusion and discussion” to “5 Conclusion and recommendation”. Hence, the ‘implications’ have been added. Of course, we hope that our amendment will be approved by you.

 

Comment 58: Line 314-315: ‘how cultural beliefs such as fengshui can serve as effective conservation instruments for small-scale forests’. It is such ‘instruments’ that need to be delved into deeper in this paper – extension and incentive programs for villages/villagers to maintain and enhance their village fengshui forests. There was earlier mention of related types of small-scale forests in other parts of the world – religious forests in Ethiopa etc. The Discussion part of this paper needs to do some linking to the literature from these similar cases, to consider what type of instruments have worked elsewhere and how that might influence processes in China. Currently there is only 1 reference (Chinese) in the whole final section.

Response 58: We have removed it as suggested.

Besides, we have done some linking to the literature from these similar cases, by adding some related studies as reference.

 

Comment 59: Line 319: ‘to plant fengshui forests’ – with all the rural development going on, more should be said about ongoing establishment of new fengshui forests.

Response 59: We have added a sentence “These funds should be allowed to plant fengshui forests in a new site or existed forests.” in section 5 (Line 364).

 

Comment 60: Line 323: ‘others are popular eco-tourist attractions’ – could this relate to the above point, creating more of these forests, or further promotion to get tourists to them to generate funds for the improved management (and expansion) of these forests? But can more tourists pose a problem for forest health?

Response 60: ‘others are popular eco-tourist attractions’ has been deleted as the increase of tourists may bring environmental problems to the conservation of fengshui forests.

 

Comment 61: Lines 332-333: final statement about ‘relying on village rules and local customs’ – I see this as a ‘governance’ matter that should be elaborated on in the paper. Linking to international literature on Indigenous/traditional forest governance systems (which includes clan-based decision-making). Beyond these points, this end part of the paper needs to better link with the statements in the Abstract that are noted above as not currently adequately addressed.

Response: As mentioned, we change the section “5 Conclusion and discussion” to “5 Conclusion and recommendation”. Moreover, we revise the conclusion we find and suggest new recommendations for Chinese and other countries’ governments to better manage culturally preserved forests. For that, we find the two problems are resolved.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

 

 Paper Review for ‘forests’ – revised version

Revised Title: Village Fengshui Forests as Forms of Cultural and Ecological Heritage: Interpretations and Conservation Policy Implications from Southern China.

18th November 2020.

Overall, the authors have done a good job with the revisions – the paper is evidently much improved. But some previously pointed to matters (mostly minor) have either not been addressed or not yet adequately addressed. Details below. There also remain many language/grammar edits – these are listed in detail below, with the annotated PDF highlighting the relevant text for easy reference.

Beyond this, there remains some issue with the important final paragraph of the Introduction. I acknowledge it has been improved, but it is still not quite right, and there is perhaps a bit too much (method) detail there now. Further comments/suggestions below. I also note the suggestion of adding in key informant quotes has not been adopted. I think this is unfortunate, as previously noted the inclusion of such quotes would add great value/depth/richness/insight to the paper. But if the Editor is ok with it, I can live with it that they are not included. The paper is still very interesting, and with the ‘implications’ improvements it is a better piece of work. In saying that, those ‘implications’ are still a little lite-on, but I can accept they are adequate, but hopefully this paper can form the basis of some far more in-depth work by the authors to further investigate/address the options for enhanced conservation of fengshui forests by better consideration of measures to conserve/enhance similar small-scale community-based forests in other parts of the world.

Abstract

At the end of the first sentence, it should also note that the paper also explores ‘and implications for their conservation’ or similar, to make it up-front that the paper is about more than the ‘descriptive’ focus previously pointed to (in the prior review).

Lines 22-25 – consider changing to ‘….to improve the management of fengshui (culturally preserved) forests. This should include measures such as village-level forest conservation strategies and subsidies for villagers to preserve and enhance (through new plantings) their fengshui forests. This study of China’s village fengshui forests highlights the cultural importance of ecosystem services from small-scale community-based forests, and the important role of local cultures and cultural traditions in forest conservation’.

Keywords

The necessary changes to ‘sacred forests’ and ‘sustainable forest management’ have not been done. Also, the keywords should be placed into alphabetical order.

Part 1 (Introduction)

Lines 31-32 – needs language edit. ‘…residential buildings and landscape planning, including …………, and environmental art and science’.

Line 40 – change to ‘describing’.

Line 46 – change to ‘for the’.

Lines 68-76 (key end of Intro part) – Firstly, following the above comments about ‘too much method detail’ – see I have suggested text to cull from this description in the Abstract.

Line 68 – change to ‘in seven villages’

Line 71 – change to past tense ‘were’.

See other suggested culls, to highlight the key points that need to be made. Similar to the above point about needing to add in detail about the paper also addressing ‘and implications for their conservation’, this needs to be better incorporated. I have not attempted to suggest the re-write of this important section of the paper – I’ll leave that to the authors, as once the other parts of the paper (particularly the revisions to the ‘Conclusions and Recommendations’, and also the above-suggested edits for the final part of the Abstract) are revised, that will greatly assist them in revising this section (as these are all linked elements of the paper). But I would like to have another look once it is done to provide a final review/suggested edits to help ensure this part best describes the paper and its value/importance etc. I look forward to that.

Part 2

Lines 92-93 – a direct quote, so a reference is needed.

Part 3

Line 117 – change to ‘of fengshui forests in the area have not…’.

Lines 121-122 – I now don’t understand this? If 1 village was selected from each town, it would be 10 villages (not 7)? Needs reconsidering. Maybe state, in the preceding sentence, how many villages exist overall. And then just say ‘In this study, seven villages were selected for field surveys’.

Lines 123 & 125 – it should be ‘villages’, not capitalised in these cases.

Line 131 – capitalise ‘Houlong’.

Line 133 & 135 – change to ‘see Appendix…’ in both cases. But the figure ordering is out. Either make this Figure 2 (figure listings must be in logical order), or a better option would be to just remove reference to this figure here.

Lines 133-135 – remove all italics font, just use normal text. And it is good that these descriptions have been included, but then there is still a couple of terms in Table 1 that could be described. Either here, or as small footnotes to the Table – ‘god of earth’ and ‘corridor bridge’ – most readers will have no idea what these are.

Line 148 – change to ‘…culture to interact with…’.

Lines 155 & 158 – seems the ‘Forestry Bureau’ should be capitalised, as it has been done later (line 183).

Line 160 – change to ‘at least one’.

Line 161 – The issue of ‘cultural blending areas’ pointed to in the prior review has not been addressed. This needs to be better explained (and see comments in the previous review).

Line 165 – not clear what ‘towns’ are being referred to? The focus so far is on ‘villages’. Some clarification is needed.

Line 171 – change to past tense ‘was’.

Lines 178-180 – this necessary inclusion of a ‘data analysis’ section is good. But the highlighted lines need some work. First, it is perhaps better as ‘We processed these different ……….into different formats to explore the data collection objectives…’. The ‘data collection objectives’ may not be the best description, but there is issue with the inclusion of ‘the research questions posed’ because none have been posed. These would usually be explicitly outlined (very clear statements) in either the final paragraph of the Introduction or in the early part of the Method. So this should be reconsidered, easiest would be to remove reference to the ‘research questions posed’. But then the ‘treatment’ part should be supported by a methodological reference – what published/academically recognised methodology/process was followed to guide your analysis process? Method sections need to be adequately described so others could potentially repeat the process. So a reference(s) is definitely needed here. There are some good qualitative data collection/analysis texts out there that would describe the ‘treatment measures’ that are pointed to – Miles and Huberman, Patton, Tashakkori & Teddlie, Yin etc. are highly credible authors in this field.

Part 4

Change the section heading to ‘Results and Discussion’

Line 185 – change the first highlight to ‘tree’, and the second to ‘The famous and ancient trees…’.

Line 208 – change to ‘(as seen in Appendix A – Figure A1, and Appendix B – Figures B1, B2 and B3)’.

Line 210 – capitalise ‘School’.

Line 220 – change to ‘through’.

Line 223 – change to ‘…water, and mitigating flooding and wind damage’.

Line 230 – a quote, so page numbers are usually needed. But maybe this is a forests referencing approach?

Line 234 – should be written in the past tense ‘had’.

Line 260 – change to ‘around their’.

Line 276 – change to ‘halls’.

Line 290 – change to ‘…; and in Lingtou…’.

Line 291 – change to ‘Punishments for………….’. And could you add detail like ‘…for damaging, desecrating and unauthorised intrusions into village fengshui forests include……’.

Line 293 – change to ‘, and having…’.

Line 305 – add ‘provinces’ after ‘Fujian’.

Line 313 – capitalise ‘County’.

Lines 318-319 – not clear what ‘by the first one’ means? Be specific, explain it clearly.

Line 320 – change to ‘to contribute to the…’.

Part 5

Change the section heading to ‘Conclusions and Recommendations’

Line 330 – change to ‘concepts’.

Line 334 – change to ‘The planting and preservation of….’.

Line 342 – consider extending to ‘…to persist for many generations to come’.

Line 349 – could be improved by changing to ‘Then, the fengshui forest planting and preservation practices of…………’ and ‘…can be disseminated to other provinces in China’.

Line 350-353 – maybe better as ‘….forests’ cultural, amenity and ecological values through specific actions or legislation, such as selecting exemplary fengshui trees/forests and designating them as official ‘small protected areas’. Moreover, local governments should integrate village…………… or other specific town/village planning regulations’. Or maybe ‘instruments’ is better than ‘regulations’?

Lines 354-358 – this is good new information, but needs some finessing to better get the message(s) across, similar to the above-suggested edits. So, consider changing to – ‘The above measures could help transform fengshui forests from ‘superstitious concepts’ to officially recognised cultural and ecological heritage features. This could further justify the position of village communities in seeking institutional support and funding to assist their continued planting (expansion) and preservation of their fengshui forests’. The final sentence at lines 357-358 could then be deleted. Consider if that works to get the intended messages across.

Lines 359-360 – similar to above, some suggested edits – ‘Sacred forests and other small-scale community-based forests (like the village fengshui forests throughout China) in many countries and regions of the world are increasingly threatened’.

Line 364 – change to ‘to guide the planting…’.

Line 365 – consider changing to ‘…, which could help to ensure the continuity of traditional tree/forest planting and preservation regimes’.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Journal Forests (ISSN 1999-4907)

Manuscript ID forests-964005

Type Article: Original article

Article title: Village Fengshui Forests as Forms of Cultural and Ecological Heritage: Interpretations and Conservation Policy Implications from Southern China

 

Point-by-point responses to the reviewer’s comments on the manuscript

 

The authors would like to thank again the editor and reviewers for careful review of our manuscript and providing us with their comments and suggestion to improve the quality of the manuscript. The following responses have been prepared to address all the reviewers’ comments in a point-by-point fashion. We also asked for professional editing support on language for the whole manuscript.   

 

Reviewer 1

Comment 1: Overall, the authors have done a good job with the revisions – the paper is evidently much improved. But some previously pointed to matters (mostly minor) have either not been addressed or not yet adequately addressed. Details below. There also remain many language/grammar edits – these are listed in detail below, with the annotated PDF highlighting the relevant text for easy reference.

Response: Thank the reviewer for the very positive comment. We greatly appreciate your detailed comments and suggestions..

Abstract

Comment 2: At the end of the first sentence, it should also note that the paper also explores ‘and implications for their conservation’ or similar, to make it up-front that the paper is about more than the ‘descriptive’ focus previously pointed to (in the prior review).

Response: We add the sentence ”and extracts implications for their planting and conservation”. (Lines 16-17)

Comment 3: Lines 22-25 – consider changing to ‘….to improve the management of fengshui (culturally preserved) forests. This should include measures such as village-level forest conservation strategies and subsidies for villagers to preserve and enhance (through new plantings) their fengshui forests. This study of China’s village fengshui forests highlights the cultural importance of ecosystem services from small-scale community-based forests, and the important role of local cultures and cultural traditions in forest conservation’.

Response: It has been revised as suggested.

Comment 4: The necessary changes to ‘sacred forests’ and ‘sustainable forest management’ have not been done. Also, the keywords should be placed into alphabetical order.

Response: Revision has been as suggested.

Comment 5: Lines 31-32 – needs language edit. ‘…residential buildings and landscape planning, including …………, and environmental art and science’.

Comment 6: Line 40 – change to ‘describing’.

Comment 7: Line 46 – change to ‘for the’.

Comment 8: Lines 68-76 (key end of Intro part) – Firstly, following the above comments about ‘too much method detail’ – see I have suggested text to cull from this description in the Abstract.

Comment 9: Line 68 – change to ‘in seven villages’

Comment 10: Line 71 – change to past tense ‘were’.

Responses 4~10:

  The points from the comments 4-10 have been reflected in the manuscript as suggested.

Comment 11: Lines 92-93 – a direct quote, so a reference is needed.

Comment 12: Line 117 – change to ‘of fengshui forests in the area have not…’.

Comment 13: Lines 121-122 – I now don’t understand this? If 1 village was selected from each town, it would be 10 villages (not 7)? Needs reconsidering. Maybe state, in the preceding sentence, how many villages exist overall. And then just say ‘In this study, seven villages were selected for field surveys’.

Comment 14: Lines 123 & 125 – it should be ‘villages’, not capitalised in these cases.

Comment 15: Line 131 – capitalise ‘Houlong’.

Comment 16: Line 133 & 135 – change to ‘see Appendix…’ in both cases. But the figure ordering is out. Either make this Figure 2 (figure listings must be in logical order), or a better option would be to just remove reference to this figure here.

Comment 17: Lines 133-135 – remove all italics font, just use normal text. And it is good that these descriptions have been included, but then there is still a couple of terms in Table 1 that could be described. Either here, or as small footnotes to the Table – ‘god of earth’ and ‘corridor bridge’ – most readers will have no idea what these are.

Comment 18: Line 148 – change to ‘…culture to interact with…’.

Comment 19: Lines 155 & 158 – seems the ‘Forestry Bureau’ should be capitalised, as it has been done later (line 183).

Comment 20: Line 160 – change to ‘at least one’.

Responses 11~20:

  The points from comments 11-20 have been reflected in the manuscript as suggested. Regarding Comment 17, two small footnotes have been added as suggested.

Comment 21: Line 161 – The issue of ‘cultural blending areas’ pointed to in the prior review has not been addressed. This needs to be better explained (and see comments in the previous review).

Responses: We delete this sentence, and add a sentence “We made sure that at least one village was affected by one of the cultures in Figure 1.”(in Lines 124-215)

Comment 22: Line 165 – not clear what ‘towns’ are being referred to? The focus so far is on ‘villages’. Some clarification is needed.

Responses: We have revised it. (Line 170)

Comment 23: Line 171 – change to past tense ‘was’.

Response: We have revised it according to your comments.

Comment 24: Lines 178-180 – this necessary inclusion of a ‘data analysis’ section is good. But the highlighted lines need some work. First, it is perhaps better as ‘We processed these different ……….into different formats to explore the data collection objectives…’. The ‘data collection objectives’ may not be the best description, but there is issue with the inclusion of ‘the research questions posed’ because none have been posed. These would usually be explicitly outlined (very clear statements) in either the final paragraph of the Introduction or in the early part of the Method. So this should be reconsidered, easiest would be to remove reference to the ‘research questions posed’. But then the ‘treatment’ part should be supported by a methodological reference – what published/academically recognised methodology/process was followed to guide your analysis process? Method sections need to be adequately described so others could potentially repeat the process. So a reference(s) is definitely needed here. There are some good qualitative data collection/analysis texts out there that would describe the ‘treatment measures’ that are pointed to – Miles and Huberman, Patton, Tashakkori & Teddlie, Yin etc. are highly credible authors in this field.

Response: We have revised it according to your comments. (Lines 184-191). Thank you for the books of qualitative data collection/analysis. A reference by Tashakkori & Teddlie has been added as suggested.

Comment 25: Change the section heading to ‘Results and Discussion’

Comment 26: Line 185 – change the first highlight to ‘tree’, and the second to ‘The famous and ancient trees…’.

Comment 27: Line 208 – change to ‘(as seen in Appendix A – Figure A1, and Appendix B – Figures B1, B2 and B3)’.

Comment 28: Line 210 – capitalise ‘School’.

Comment 29: Line 220 – change to ‘through’.

Comment 30: Line 223 – change to ‘…water, and mitigating flooding and wind damage’.

Responses 25~30:

  The points from the comments 25~30 have been reflected in the manuscript as suggested.

Comment 31 Line 230 – a quote, so page numbers are usually needed. But maybe this is a forests referencing approach?

Responses 25~30: We have deleted this quote.

Comment 32: Line 234 – should be written in the past tense ‘had’.

Comment 33: Line 260 – change to ‘around their’.

Comment 34: Line 276 – change to ‘halls’.

Comment 35: Line 290 – change to ‘…; and in Lingtou…’.

Comment 36: Line 291 – change to ‘Punishments for………….’. And could you add detail like ‘…for damaging, desecrating and unauthorised intrusions into village fengshui forests include……’.

Comment 37: Line 293 – change to ‘, and having…’.

Comment 38: Line 305 – add ‘provinces’ after ‘Fujian’.

Comment 39: Line 313 – capitalise ‘County’.

Comment 40: Lines 318-319 – not clear what ‘by the first one’ means? Be specific, explain it clearly.

Comment 41: Line 320 – change to ‘to contribute to the…’.

Comment 42: Change the section heading to ‘Conclusions and Recommendations’

Comment 43: Line 330 – change to ‘concepts’.

Comment 44: Line 334 – change to ‘The planting and preservation of….’.

Comment 45: Line 342 – consider extending to ‘…to persist for many generations to come’.

Comment 46: Line 349 – could be improved by changing to ‘Then, the fengshui forest planting and preservation practices of…………’ and ‘…can be disseminated to other provinces in China’.

Comment 47: Line 350-353 – maybe better as ‘….forests’ cultural, amenity and ecological values through specific actions or legislation, such as selecting exemplary fengshui trees/forests and designating them as official ‘small protected areas’. Moreover, local governments should integrate village…………… or other specific town/village planning regulations’. Or maybe ‘instruments’ is better than ‘regulations’?

Comment 48: Lines 354-358 – this is good new information, but needs some finessing to better get the message(s) across, similar to the above-suggested edits. So, consider changing to – ‘The above measures could help transform fengshui forests from ‘superstitious concepts’ to officially recognised cultural and ecological heritage features. This could further justify the position of village communities in seeking institutional support and funding to assist their continued planting (expansion) and preservation of their fengshui forests’. The final sentence at lines 357-358 could then be deleted. Consider if that works to get the intended messages across.

Comment 49: Lines 359-360 – similar to above, some suggested edits – ‘Sacred forests and other small-scale community-based forests (like the village fengshui forests throughout China) in many countries and regions of the world are increasingly threatened’.

Comment 50: Line 364 – change to ‘to guide the planting…’.

Comment 51: Line 365 – consider changing to ‘…, which could help to ensure the continuity of traditional tree/forest planting and preservation regimes’.

Responses 32~51:

  The points from the comments 32~51 have been reflected in the manuscript as suggested.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx