Carbon Stocks in Miombo Woodlands: Evidence from over 50 Years
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments to the revised forests paper “Carbon stocks in miombo woodlands: evidence from over 50 years” written by Bulusu et al.
Thanks for giving me a chance to reassess the revised draft. Again, the study integrates or uses published studies. Work related to this topic is needed but sorry the revised draft did not address my main concerns. Actually, it opened more questions which are essential for this type of work:
One of my main concerns was the range of data (if possible). It would have been expected to get some information about the studies found in the literature, provide a very short description of the data collection design and the range of the underlying data collected (e.g. dbh ranging from to or so if possible). This is still missing and just writing that there are large errors is scientifically extremely weak.
In Section 2.3. the sentence starts with “In the assessed literature… “ where we see the citations of this literature?
In the last three sentences of this paragraph it is mentioned that different or no error measures are given. If we know the study and which error range of the data was provided we at least would get an impression.
Another issue is section 3.1. in which it is stated that old growth ranged from to … in relation to Figure 2. The question here is - are these numbers an effect of management (then it is OK) or do they also show an age trend? This is only possible to judge if we no more about the underlying data structure. The current statement is so general that it rather useless.
Summing up it is clear that such a study is difficult and the authors did a nice statistical analysis. However, the authors really must go into the details of the underlying data structure of the used published studies so that is possible to judge the reliability of the presented results.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Great work. The manuscript is even better now.
One minor thing to correct is the symbol in subscript in Equation 2. I guess it should be BAsh.
Best regards.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I pleased with the response. So from my side we are ready for publicaton I have no furhter comments
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments for authors
General Comments
The manuscript by Bulusu et al presents a thorough compilation of biomass carbon data and soil carbon data for miombo woodlands in Africa. This paper adds a bit more information to the literature compared two what data were used in the review published by Gumbo in 2018. The methods of estimating soil carbon and forest biomass stocks are sound.
While the paper provides lots of data, I think much more could be done to use these data to address some critical questions about the controls on both soil carbon and on biomass carbon. It’s a great dataset, and there are many interesting questions that could be addressed with subsets of these data. But by combining them all into one big database, with little qualifying information, it is difficult use them to address interesting questions about how factors like management and climate (ppt) influence carbon stocks and accumulation in these miombo woodlands.
One idea might be to focus the paper on woodlands recovering from disturbance. The paper includes some very interesting data on both biomass and vegetation C stocks, particularly in the regrowing woodlands. It would be great if the authors could use that information to create e.g. growth curves for these critical species, and how those curves might vary with climate. Similar questions could perhaps be asked of the soils data. How much does soil C change with disturbance, and how quickly does it recover. These would all be very interesting questions that, if addressed in the manuscript, would make a much more significant contribution to the literature than the compilation of data presented in this manuscript.
Detailed comments
ABSTRACT
have to specify depth for the soil C estimate in Abstract, and whether Organic carbon. Without depth, the data are not helpful…The authors allude to this themselves
Shoot: root is 2:1 – that is very high!! For old-growth….. Must be a dry area (so much going to roots)
INTRO
Climate stats useful on these woodlands
L62 Awkward sentence
L66 – regrowing forests will almost always contribute to carbon sequestration – question is how quickly….
L70 – species names should be italicized
Need to be clear on whether “belowground” refers to roots, soils, or both. It seems to change throughout the manuscript.
L143. The key question is how much more information this paper provides compared to the Gumbo et al manuscript. I think it would be much better placed to make a contribution if the data could be used to address a key question about changes in carbon over time (both soils and vegetation) and space (but attributed to different factors)
L145 – if these are the key questions, perhaps this manuscript could address these questions to distinguish it form the previous work (land-use and management).
METHODS
191 – this paper IS a bit different by stratifying the reporting by the different management systems….this could be a focus of the paper as well.
Fig. 2b not really needed (% by publication year).
I don’t find Table 2 very helpful – soil C data at various depths with no other information. Also table 3 (maybe “accumulation”, but not really, as just estimates of stocks at different ages……). But these data are useful as they indicate something about recovery of the system…..this could be a more interesting focus on the manuscript
283 Without the supporting information on e.g. edaphic conditions, site history, etc. I’m not really sure how useful the soils data are?? This is mentioned as a caveat in the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Review for forests paper “Carbon stocks in miombo woodlands: evidence from over 50 years” written by Bulusu et al.
The paper deals with a literature review of the available published information related to carbon stocks in the Mimbo woodlands. Based on an extensive search of relevant papers with data from the region the authors do a very good job to structure and analyze the relevance of the available information to achieve the goals of this study. Work related to this paper is important however there are some issues which need to be clarified prior to a potential publication:
In the introduction the paper formulates 5 very important and interesting key goals. However later on in the paper one would expect that the authors refer to these goals in the Result and Discussion section.
An important part of the used studies would be the range of the data and the concept of data collection. For example, one of the problems of a lot of carbon stock publications is that the data collection is expensive and difficult. Thus, empirical studies often cover a limited range (e.g. age or DBH, etc.) and then used beyond the collected data range. This may lead to huge errors in the resulting carbon stocks and even more important, people who refer to these studies do not pay attention or don’t even know the original data range. I see this as one of the key weaknesses of this study that this is not addresses. The good news is that this should be easy to address. Just simply add information where you refer to the original data range covered by a published study. This would be important for the importance fo the paper.
Referring to my previous comment, this is the key of this paper – What is the available range of data and how reliable do they describe the different carbon stocks.
In the result section one would expect that we learn what is the available information according to the different compartments (soil, etc.). Presenting the studies by country as a result makes no sense since Figure 2 should be part o f a data section.
The whole result section should be structured according to the goals of the paper so that we get answers to the proposed questions (see intro).
3.4. Conservation status ….: It is difficult to understand how it fits to the goals of the paper
An important and a bit confusing part of the paper is the range of the data in the result section. What is the meaning of this range and why is this considered here as an important result? With other words, what is the information provided with such data? It is obvious that young stands have lower carbon stocks than older forests?
3.7. Parameters… How does this section fit to the goals of the paper?
Discussion section: Referring to the previous comments, the discussion section should answer the set goals in the introduction, this is a bit missing.
Summing up, a lot of work has been put in this study and work related to this study is well received. The paper needs more focus and a systematic flow according to the goals of the paper. The current draft is a bit confusing and seems to need a major revision prior to a potential publication.
Reviewer 3 Report
Congratulations for writing a great publication.
My comments are mostly of an editorial nature - please, treat these as suggestions, rather than hard requests.
Best regards
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
