Slash Pile Burn Scar Restoration: Tradeoffs between Abundance of Non-Native and Native Species

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

ABSTRACT

Ok but explain a little bit "fuels"
Only vegetation restoring aspect considered?
Soil properties changes and hydraulic effects?
Hydrogeological risks connected?

INTRODUCTION

Line 45->49 I think you can enlarge this paragraph
because the consequences of fire on infiltration and soil
properties are very important for hydrogeological risk
prevention and modelling.

Line 55->66 Can you better explain the effects of fire
on ROOTS?? I think that a Figure of these Piles could be
explicative of the method you are describing.

Line 58 and Line 72-74 -A Please use the citation not Fornwalt et al

Line 78-95: There are some interesting citation of the some author works but in my opinion a sythetic table should be better to reassume these in a clearly way.

Line 96-135: In my opinion you can synthetize a bit in a better order. It could be more
clear for the readers to understand the current challenges around these topics.

Line 121-142: may be you can adjust this part with a more syntetic bullet point list or a table.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Lines 145-170: Well described but 2 missing: SI notations of unit measures, and a complete figure of the location, field samples and all the elements needed for the reader to understand your work!

Lines 172-189: Clear but a table ora an additional figure of the seeds used for the restoration could be explicative.

Lines 191-199: Add a spatial scheme and temporal timeline of the vegetation samplings and seedling establishment study.

Line 212-238: The data analysis part is quite too narrow but in my opinion is a key fundamental party to understand how
you have worked. Please add some formulae or some details of the procedure about statistical analysis and test that you have used
to interpret the data.

RESULTS

Line 139-347: the results seems to be presented clearly and synthetic may be you can uniform the figure characters in respect to the
tables fonts.

DISCUSSIONS

Line 348-416: in the discussion have been discussed three main topic that were also presented in the results. Unfortunately, a broad discussion is not so useful sometimes. In my opinion you can compare some of the previous results adding a table for comparing the different hypothesis in order to highlight key parts of your study and then discuss them considering
literature evidence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I know it is a very specific topic but in my opinion you can enlarge a bit the bibliography you cited.

As you said before, the management practice for soil remediation or conservation are important in the hydrogeological sector for
evaluating risks. Therefore, if FIRE is used to do that, additional alteration of the natural terrain equilibrium is caused modifying some
hydrological properties of the soil. In this light, your work could have a practical application in the field study of the FIRE Hydrogeological RISKS
consequences. As you have said at line 45-49 studies on infiltration have a key role in this. Among others, I suggest to see:
Abbate, A.; Longoni, L.; Ivanov, V.I.; Papini, M. Wildfire Impacts on Slope Stability Triggering in Mountain Areas. Geosciences 2019, 9, 417.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Dear Editor

I think that this manuscript includes a study about an attractive topic and it is interesting for publication, especially because have good conclusions to protected areas management. However, I include some suggestions that I think that can improve the manuscript:

1- Introduction:

I think that the first two hypothesis can be reformulating as only one, and both might to be treated simultaneous, since obviously both results are interconnected through and negative correlation, that perhaps might to be expressed as a GLM.

2- Methods

-Might to be useful to include a map where both, control and treated plots can be distinguished, to see also number of treated plots in the North and in the South.

-Really is is possible to sure that both, control and treated plots, had similar effects of herbicide?

- I would like a better explanation about why the authors selected just these Park selected native species to seeded. Why did not use all native species that are be able to develop there?

3-Results

I think that the results might to be reduced without to loss any data:

-In my opinion the figure 2 is not necessary, it is possible to understand the same with the figure 3.

- To include a model to see the relationship between the increase of native species and the decrease of non-native species in control and treated plots might to be interesting, and perhaps figure 1 and 4 might to be joined in the same graph.

Yours sincerely

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors investigated an important but less extensively explored topic: the actual change of native and non-native species during the post-fire recovery. Such work is less common as only a handful of researchers may have access to conduct the field experiment mentioned in the manuscript. The authors organized the description of experiments and results using three well-designed hypotheses and the corresponding predictions of the recovery of native/non-native species within and beyond the burn scars. Then the authors conducted statistical analysis of plant growth data to observe the outcomes of the experiments and investigate whether the results meet the predictions proposed in the hypotheses. The authors also discussed the results of the restoration experiments with existing outcomes from similar experiments over different types of landscapes, as well as the unexpected consequences of the suppression of native species.

Overall, I find this manuscript is well organized and very enlightening. In particular, I like the authors' use of hypotheses and predictions to structure the experiment results and the following discussion. This significantly reduced the difficulty to understand the results for a broad audience body. In addition, I am impressed by the presentation of results and the thoroughly designed statistical analysis over a series of metrics for vegetation growth. In the end, the discussion is well written and very authentic about the limitation and unexpected findings.

I have one suggestion to improve the manuscript if the authors have the resources to do it. A map illustrating the study area, especially the burn scar, the controlling sites, and the experiment sites would be very useful, especially for the audience who are not familiar with the geography of the United States. A brief description on the dominant vegetation type, the elevation, and the topographic characteristics of the study area would be useful.

Also, I recommend using the metric unit system for height and area from Line 145 to 150.   

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the cover letter. I have personally appreciated your replies to my comments and I found them complete.

I think that paper is now more readable and different parts are homogeneous, presenting the results in a clear way.

The last thing I can suggest you is to reduce the appendix part, including the schemes and the maps (especially) in line with the text if it is possible. 

Kindly regards

Author Response

Thank you for the thoughtful review of our manuscript. We appreciate your comments to improve our paper for publication. We have moved the study site map, table of seeded species, and timeline out of the appendix into the main body of the text to address your final comment. 

Sincerely,

Ian Sexton