Fire Severity Controls Successional Pathways in a Fire-Affected Spruce Forest in Eastern Fennoscandia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors deal with the interesting and up-to-date topic of fire severity in terms of vegetation succession. However, they have to highlight the wildfire consequences more extensively and the utilization of modern technologies as tools to assist/monitor succession. I suggest some remarks for revision by the authors as follows:

Avoid the use of expressions such as “we studied” ect. According to the reviewer's opinion, the use of passive voice is preferable in a scientific article. Please check and revise the whole text.  

Line 40. In the aftermath of wildfire accelerated erosion occurs that threatens natural regeneration and ecosystem recovery (Stefanidis et al., 2022; Godfree et al., 2021).

Stefanidis, S., Alexandridis, V., Spalevic, V., & Mincato, R. L. (2022). Wildfire Effects on Soil Erosion Dynamics: The Case of 2021 Megafires in Greece. Agriculture & Forestry, 68(2), 49-63.

Godfree, R. C., Knerr, N., Encinas-Viso, F., Albrecht, D., Bush, D., Christine Cargill, D., ... & Broadhurst, L. M. (2021). Implications of the 2019–2020 megafires for the biogeography and conservation of Australian vegetation. Nature communications, 12(1), 1-13.

Line 44. Nowadays, the technological development and availability of high-resolution geospatial data leads to an easy assessment of vegetation recovery and forest succession trends with remote sensing (Oikonomakis et al., 2012; Christopoulou et al., 2019)

Oikonomakis, N., & Ganatsas, P. (2012). Land cover changes and forest succession trends in a site of Natura 2000 network (Elatia forest), in northern Greece. Forest Ecology and Management, 285, 153-163.

Christopoulou, A., Mallinis, G., Vassilakis, E., Farangitakis, G. P., Fyllas, N. M., Kokkoris, G. D., & Arianoutsou, M. (2019). Assessing the impact of different landscape features on post-fire forest recovery with multitemporal remote sensing data: the case of Mount Taygetos (southern Greece). International Journal of Wildland Fire, 28(7), 521-532.

Line 76. The authors have to clearly justify why this article/approach is novel. Which are the research gaps in this field? How they addressed the in a pioneering way?

Line 175. It would be useful to add an overall workflow of the methodology in the end of this chapter.

Discussion: the effect of abiotic and biotic disturbances on the forest ecosystems and mainly pinewoods should be discussed in relation to recent publications as follows

Sierota, Z., Grodzki, W., & Szczepkowski, A. (2019). Abiotic and biotic disturbances affecting forest health in Poland over the past 30 years: Impacts of climate and forest management. Forests, 10(1), 75.

Stefanidis, S., Alexandridis, V., & Mallinis, G. (2022). A cloud-based mapping approach for assessing spatiotemporal changes in erosion dynamics due to biotic and abiotic disturbances in a Mediterranean peri-urban forest. Catena, 218, 106564.

Also, in the discussion briefly describe some goals for future research in this topic

 

 

 

 

Author Response

We are grateful to the reviewer for the careful reading of the article and comments. We agree with most of the proposals and have made appropriate changes to the text. We would like to emphasize that the article reflects the results of the first ten years of observations and we certainly plan to continue research, including the analysis of satellite images. We will take the reviewer's recommendations into account in our future work. Reaction to specific comments in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Fire Severity Controls Successional Pathways In A Fire-Affected Spruce Forest In Eastern Fennoscandia

Dear Authors

The basic science of this paper is conducted in a good way and is of an appropriate standard.  The author and his team write this paper according to journal's scope and modern trends. I am glad to review this paper because the paper is very interesting according to my research interest area.

The authors studied tree stand dynamics, changes in the ground vegetation and soils, and species diversity of wood-decaying fungi in pristine middle boreal spruce forests affected by a surface fire in the Vodlozersky National Park (Arkhangelsk Region, Russia) in 2011. In this manuscript. I found very long sentences and some grammar mistakes. The author should revise the whole manuscript and fix some grammar mistakes and split long sentences. Moreover, the paper is well-structured. I am going to recommend minor revisions at this stage. I hope, the author will follow our comments and enhance their own study and resubmit again in this journal.

Best Regards

Title

•I am not satisfied with the title of this study. See my suggestion

Fire Severity Controls Successional Pathways In A Fire-Affected Spruce Forest In Eastern Fennoscandiaà Fire Severity controls Successional Pathways in a Fire-Affected Spruce Forest in Eastern Fennoscandia

Abstract

•The author should revise the whole abstract and explain the whole study in a good way.

 

Introduction

Objectives are not clear at the end of the introduction section

 

2. Material and Methods

2.1. Study area

·         Modify figure 1.

·         There are 3 sub figure in the figure 1. the author should explain in the caption.

·         Caption of figure 3 is not right.

2.2. Methods

·   Explain methods in a good way with the flow of the chart. How to conduct this study.

·   Check the quality of figure 9.

·   Conclusion part is very lengthy, try to rewrite and highlight the significance of the research

Author Response

We are grateful to the reviewer for the careful reading of the article and comments. We agree with most of comments and have made appropriate changes to the text. We would like to emphasize that the article reflects the results of the first ten years of observations and we certainly plan to continue research. So, we will take the reviewer's recommendations into account in our future work. Reaction to specific comments in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors addressed all the reviewer comments