Spatial Assessment of Ecosystem Services from Planted Forests in Central Vietnam

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript provides an assessment of ecosystem services (ES) resulting from planted forests in two provinces in Central Vietnam. This is an interesting study incorporating changes (i.e. quantitative) in land use for a decade period, where ES are assessed and highlighted specifically for planted forests. My main comment is to provide somewhere in the Introduction section, and bring this back to the Discussion section, information about how much of the planted forests will remain as forest and how much of this will be harvested for provisioning services (ES). This will give an idea of the relevance of planted forests as a permanent source and improvement for other ES such as freshwater and regulating and habitat services.

Also important is to provide some information on human pressure on the land uses assessed at different sections of the two provinces. As an initial assessment, this information could be also important to establish priorities for the two provinces.

The manuscript is easy to follow by the reader, but some suggestions are provided below to improve the understanding of the manuscript.

 

L50. So, do planted forests represent a 7% of the total forest cover worldwide? If so, please re-write this clearer.

L54-57. Very long sentence that is not easy to follow.

L67. As mentioned above, how much of this will be harvested and how much will remain as forests?

L75-77. Vey long sentence that is hard to follow.

L195. It is better to use “observable changes” since significant is used when providing statistical results.

L321. Not clear sentence.

L347. Acacia should be in italics.

 

Author Response

This manuscript provides an assessment of ecosystem services (ES) resulting from planted forests in two provinces in Central Vietnam. This is an interesting study incorporating changes (i.e. quantitative) in land use for a decade period, where ES are assessed and highlighted specifically for planted forests.

My main comment is to provide somewhere in the Introduction section and bring this back to the Discussion section, information about how much of the planted forests will remain as forest and how much of this will be harvested for provisioning services (ES). This will give an idea of the relevance of planted forests as a permanent source and improvement for other ES such as freshwater and regulating and habitat services.  

Response/changes:

Forests (including planted forests) in Vietnam are divided into three categories according to its functions: (1) special use forests (for gene and biodiversity conservation such as national parks, nature reserves etc. and almost no timber harvest); (2) protection forests (for watershed and coastal protection; they are very strict to timber exploitation); and (3) Production forests (timber harvest is allowed).

Forest Law provides the definition of forests and plantations qualified as forests if they meet: (1) Minimum area: 0.3 ha; (2) canopy cover: 0.1; and (3) minimum tree height: 1 -5 m (depending on biophysical condition, i.e. on the sandy area is 1 m; inland area: 5 m; and rocky area: 2 m). The law also states that forestry plantations can only be established on land planned for forestry purpose and the harvested plantations must be replanted within 12 months.

That means: (1) The plantation areas provided in this paper are qualified as forests for the reported time. The net plantations recorded for 2005 and 2015 in 2 study provinces show an increasing trend. I do agree there is the certain area of plantation harvested during 2005-2015, but this analysis assesses the changes in plantation area at 2 points of time (2005 and 2015); (2) The expansion of plantations mainly incur in the non-forest area; (3) Annual cut area from plantations is quite small. The estimated annual cut area of plantation in these two provinces over 2005-2015 is just about 5,000 -5,500 ha, accounting to ~3% of its total plantation area.

The harvested area will again be planted within 1-2 years so there will be no change on land use although the ecosystem services value from newly planted forests differs to the matured plantation.

Also important is to provide some information on human pressure on the land uses assessed at different sections of the two provinces. As an initial assessment, this information could also be important to establish priorities for the two provinces.  

Response/changes:

This is beyond the scope of this analysis. The land tenure (exactly is land use rights) is legally recognized for forest growers, including smallholders through land allocation policy. Land use rights are secured for 50 years, and the land users can return the allocated land if they wish to do so. Population growing, of course, imposes pressures on land uses, but it is impossible to re-allocate the land according to the existing law. That is also a reason for shifting labour source from rural area to urban area and migration of young people for work.

The manuscript is easy to follow by the reader, but some suggestions are provided below to improve the understanding of the manuscript.

L50. So, do planted forests represent 7% of the total forest cover worldwide? If so, please re-write this clearer.

Response/ changes: Many thanks to the reviewer, we have paraphrased the line L50-L51

L54-57. Very long sentence that is not easy to follow.

Response/ changes: Many thanks to the reviewer, we paraphrase the mentioned line

L67. As mentioned above, how much of this will be harvested and how much will remain as forests?

Response/ changes: Total area of planted forests in two provinces is 182,000 ha (as of 2015), with annual harvest about 5,000 -6000 ha (i.e., less than 3 % per annum). The harvested land will be replanted as forests although there will be time-lag about two years from harvest to new planting.

L75-77. Vey long sentence that is hard to follow

Response/ changes: We have changed the order of the sentences in the paragraph, hope its provide clearer information now.

L195. It is better to use “observable changes” since significant is used when providing statistical results.

Response/ changes: Many thanks to the reviewer, we have changed the term as suggested L201.

L321. Not a clear sentence.

Response/ changes: Many thanks to the reviewer, we have added the missing sentence in paragraph L328.

L347. Acacia should be in italics.

Response/ changes: Changed accordingly

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

It is unclear from the paper which type of the forest restoration (combined or artificial) is the main Vietnam strategy? And which factors are influence on the choice of the forest restoration strategy?

A mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to assess the spatial pattern of change in ES, as was stated as highlights.

However, the text often provides qualitative and quotative assessment according literature data and previously published results. Current work does not have clearly defined thesis according novelty and accuracy of the gained results. The work is more review, than a research. In that case, there is not enough comparative analysis with the experience of different countries according to a strategy of the forest restoration, regeneration scheme of the forest vegetation and dynamics.

The problem of the forest regeneration financing, as well as forest transport infrastructure creation, is depending on the yield of forest wood resources. In order to manage forest exploration and regeneration wisely, one need to know the value of the yield, know how to assess the profitability value of wood before it is cut down. Is there any data on this problem? And how the yield is assessed in the case of short or long-term forest use?

Author Response

It is unclear from the paper which type of forest restoration (combined or artificial) is the main Vietnam strategy? And which factors are an influence on the choice of the forest restoration strategy?  

Response/ changes: See response to the first comment by reviewer #1 above.

A mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used to assess the spatial pattern of change in ES, as was stated as highlights. However, the text often provides qualitative and quotative assessment according to literature data and previously published results. Current work does not have a clearly defined thesis according to novelty and accuracy of the gained results. The work is more review than research. In that case, there is not enough comparative analysis with the experience of different countries according to a strategy of the forest restoration, regeneration scheme of the forest vegetation and dynamics.

Response/Changes: This research was not aimed to assess spatial pattern changes in ES. Spatial analysis was used as an approach to quantify ES in landscape level. Main objectives of this paper are to estimate the impact of planted forest in ES by comparing ES value in a landscape level from a time series dataset. As the planted forest is usually only considered for timber provision, incorporating other ES value like regulating services and habitat service will give a new perspective of ES benefit from planted forest especially if the planted forest is used for restoration activities.  

The problem of the forest regeneration financing, as well as forest transport infrastructure creation, is depending on the yield of forest wood resources. In order to manage forest exploration and regeneration wisely, one needs to know the value of the yield, know how to assess the profitability value of wood before it is cut down. Is there any data on this problem? And how the yield is assessed in the case of short or long-term forest use?

Response/ changes:  This is out of the scope of the paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors presented convincing arguments and did a good job on the new
version of the article.