Form Factors of an Economically Valuable Sal Tree (Shorea robusta) of Nepal

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors intent to calculate form factors of the Sal species in a specific region of Nepal what would help forest managers and other actors. Nevertheless, here are flaws on the background, sampling protocol, estimates of the form factor and validation of the results. 

All the trees were sampled in the same location. There is little or none information on site conditions, habitat or dynamic of the species to better understand whether this site is representative of the average conditions of the region or not. Adding other study sampling sites, would benefit the sounding of the paper.

The sampling protocol is not properly explained, neither some of the analysis. This is probably the main problem of the paper. The paper is poorly structured, so it is difficult to follow. There are sections on the results not explained on the methods. For instance, the authors report equations to estimate form factor from DBH and Height without any background. The performance of their models is low, and they don't report accuracy metrics, other than R2. A proper validation analysis is missing.

In general, the paper needs improvement in English editing and grammar,  but also a reformulation of the structure. Some information reported is irrelevant for their goals and the scientific sounding of the paper is under question and, at some point, it is not even supported on the discussion (see lines 255-256). Figures and tables are not self-explanatory.

I would encourage the authors to rewrite the paper. Focusing on a deep restructuration of the methods and results so it is easy for the reader to understand what they did. I would improve the protocol section and try to expand the analysis to other samples sites to make the conclusions more robust and add a section focused on validation of the form factor estimates.

Please, see in the attached document some more specific comments that the authors might find helpful to improve their draft.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

 

Thank you so much for providing the opportunity to review and resubmit our articles. Your valuable comments and use to enrich our paper. Detail of the revised manuscript including the response is attached.

 

Best Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

line 113 The height of the tree, crown height, and crown length, ... Should it be: The height of the tree, crown width, crown length, ...

line 186: please check: "to decrease with further increase in DBH and or height.wood The wood form factor was larger than

Figure 3. Caption of C and D is missing

Please check the data reported in lines 273/274

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

 

Thank you so much for providing the opportunity to review and resubmit our articles. Your valuable comments and use to enrich our paper. Detail of the revised manuscript including the response is attached.

 

Best Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx