Revealing Changes in the Stem Form and Volume Allocation in Diverse Boreal Forests Using Two-Date Terrestrial Laser Scanning
, Tuomas Yrttimaa 1,2, Ville Kankare 2, Ninni Saarinen 2, Jiri Pyörälä 1,3, Antero Kukko 3,4, Harri Kaartinen 3,5, Juha Hyyppä 3, Markus Holopainen 1,3 and Mikko Vastaranta 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
The manuscript has a valuable topic. It is well written except for some paragraphs were difficult to understand. I have some minor comments mainly in the discussion section.
Detailed comments:
Keywords:
Please add Laser Scaning to the keywords list.
Introduction:
line 81-92 this part was difficult to understand. please rewrite it in a clear way.
Line 111: please avoid using personal pronouns ;
Please change In this study we aim... to This study aimed to and apply this rule throughout the manuscript.
Discussion:
The author tend to discuss data in tables only(except for figure2). The rest of the figures were not discussed.
Since this section is missing thoroughly discussion for the data in figures. the author is advised to rewrite the discussion section properly.
line 531-551 this section need clarification . please rewrite
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments:
Abstract and Introduction read very well. The abstract provides a nice overview of the study, while the Introduction does a good job at setting the scene for what is to come. Only a few minor comments on these sections (see list below). The Materials and Methods section is very well structured, clearly explaining all the steps undertaken in this study. I only have a handful of small comments, which are listed below. The results are also very clearly structured and presented. The discussion section is very well done. The authors did a really nice job at identifying all the major advantages and criticalities related to their work. The Conclusions are appropriate. Very nice manuscript.
Please find below some minor comments.
L 28: Please change ‘promotes’ to ‘promote’.
L 39-40: I would suggest to change ‘have been interested’ to ‘are interested’.
L 40: I am not entirely familiar with the phrase ‘allocate growth’. I get what you are saying here, but I wonder whether a different choice of words would be more appropriate. Would it not be more correct to refer to allocating carbon? Please consider this.
L 44: same concern as L 40. Please consider changing to ‘allocation of carbon’.
L 50: Please consider changing ‘reach its living crown upwards’ to ‘grow its crown taller’.
L 63: Please consider adding ‘rather’ before ‘than in the upper part…’.
L 64: Please change ‘at’ with ‘in’. Also, you can either say ‘resulting in more tapering’ or ‘resulting in a more tapered stem’.
L 74-75: Please move the ‘for example’ to just before ‘the logwood is the most…’.
L 117: Please change ‘at the lower’ to ‘to the lower’.
L 138: Which deciduous species were present in the study? 1/5 of total stem volume is quite a bit.
L 146-160: Is there a specific reason for using two different TLS systems? It is unclear to me if you acquired 5 scans with both systems or used a mix… Please explain/clarify.
L 189-190: Please consider moving the “being” from just before “361 (28.2%)” to before “mainly birches …”.
L 224: Please change “especially at the upper” to “especially in the upper”.
L 304: At the start of this paragraph you claim that this third group has 201 trees, now you say 204. Which is the correct one and which is a typo?
L 353: Please consider changing “how much there was” to “how much was the”.
L 371: Please change to “this led to the rejection”.
L 385-389: Since the four structural groups are listed in the previous sentence, the “respectively” at the end of this sentence is not really related to them. I would suggest to re-phrase the two sentences to have the decreases in TAP shown in brackets when each structural group is mentioned, and in the next sentence just provide the percentages at T1 and T2.
L 391-393: This sentence is unnecessary. It goes without saying that if only 2 groups are significant, then the other two are not. I would suggest to remove it.
L 401: Why did you choose p < 0.04? Normally the p values thresholds are *** = p < 0.001, ** = p < 0.01, * = p < 0.05, ns = p > 0.05. Was this a typo?
L 421: Please change to “Despite the fact that”. Also, see comment for L 401.
L 426: Please change to “in a younger”.
L 428: Please change “phase” to “phases”.
L 436: I would suggest to rename this section to “Overall changes”.
Table 4 header: I would suggest to put the units in brackets, instead of after a comma. E.g. T1 (m3)
L 459-460: See comment for L 401.
L 482: See comment for L 401.
L 488: Please add “, respectively” after old-growth forests.
L 492: Change to “except for the comparison”.
L 529: Please remove “regarding”.
L 612: Please change to “From a forest management”.
L 614-615: Please add a comma after “of this study”, and another comma after “the stem form”.
L 620: There is no need for the comma after “to determine”, please remove it.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Article is dealing with interesting topic and is bringing useful findings. I recommend to publish it in current state.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
