Competitive Hierarchy Processes Support Mixed Species Regeneration in Strip-Cuts in the British Columbia Interior

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have read MS entitled “Competitive Hierarchy Processes Support Mixed Species Regeneration in Strip-shelterwoods in the Interior British Columbia” with code No 1586892.

1- It is recommended that the full name of the species be written in Latin or English in the column of Table 1. In this way, it will be avoided at the bottom of the Table.

2- Two small openings (< 1 ha) were created with a size of 50 m × 150 m each. Why two openings and not more were selected?

3- How many seedlings does each triangle of the opening represent in Figure 1? Please explain it in the footnote of Figure.

4- How many light sensors and with what distance from each other were set up in experimental layout planned in Figure 1?

5- The type of the experimental design in methodology of research is needed to mention.

6- In Figure 4b no grouping is observed. It is not clear how the grouping was determined or analyzed. It is better to make a circular line around specific tree species for illustrating each group (1 to 3). Each circular line also should be cited by an English letter, following statistical analysis as Means Comparison made for example with Duncan test or other relevant tests, for showing the significant difference of means (groups).

7- In conclusion, it is better to mention the species should not be planted in the proximity of gap edges. Likewise, intolerant species which are suitable for the middle of the opening are better to note, too.

8- Some writing edits are needed in text.

Wishes,

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of Forests 1586892 “Competitive Hierarchy Processes Support Mixed Species Regeneration in Strip-shelterwoods in the Interior British Columbia” by Hossain et al.

General comments

This is a well-written manuscript reporting stemwood volume of nine species planted 15 years ago in lines bisecting two rectangular patches. I’m excited about the results and their application to management. Easy to correct is the misnaming of silvicultural system: this is either a patch cut or group selection or a (small) strip clearcut, but not strip shelterwood (see www.for.gov.bc.ca) since no shelter trees were retained in a dispersed arrangement throughout the strips.

 Unfortunately, the data for tree volume are not independent of one another making the basic regression analysis inappropriate – it overstates the significance of different effects and their interactions (species x distance). Reanalysis using a mixed-effects glm is needed to incorporate the random effect for categorical variable “gap number (1 or 2)” to account for the nesting of planted trees within gaps and possibly blocks within gaps and transects within blocks. The run post-hoc pairwise tests to see which species actually differed (e.g., Lenth, R.; Singmann, H.; Love, J.; Buerkner, P.; Herve, M. 2019. Package ‘emmeans’). As such, I suspect differences reported in the Results section will be overstated.  I think the study design limitation (lack of replication, no df) should be discussed in a limitations paragraph, and disclosed in the manuscript title ”Case study of…”

Individual comments

L16 I’m more familiar with the forestry terms “stratification” and “stratified mixture”.  Please check that ‘competitive hierarchy’ is what you indeed want to call this phenomenon especially since you did not study this competition directly.

L16 do not capitalize common name ponderosa pine. Repeats throughout (l104,… ).

L17 Douglas-fir is spelled correctly here but hyphen is absent in other places later

L19 consider ‘feasible‘ in lieu of ‘plausible’

L25 Be sure you really want to capitalize words Cedar Hemlock as this is unexpected by readers outside BC

L49 yes, it’s a small clearcut, often termed ‘patch cut’ or ‘group selection opening’.

L50 with the southern edge

L52 which.    No period

L58 “…gradient can cause intolerant species to be excluded or to differentiate into stratified mixtures.”  (“competitive ranks”? is unfamiliar term in forestry)

L64 “linking” unclear meaning – instead try “across the range of”

L68 “affect the light”

L80 ICH already defined earlier? Just use acronym, or don’t.

Table 1:  Unusual species codes not intuitive. I like PP for ponderosa pine, or PIPO.

L120 “…to 1995. The area was planted in the…”

Figure 1: the last half of figure caption should be regular body text, not in caption.

Figure 2:  very cool!!

Equation 1:  give left-hand-side variable, and define the variables and their units in the text  “where d = distance from southern forest edge in meters; %PPFD =   etc...

L165 demarcation of the openings’ boundaries (measured from the stem of edge trees?) so…

L203 “growth potential” is not a forestry term. Unclear and vague. Please say what you mean: growth? Vigor? Or?

L247 “…reduction in proximity to gap edges, but they…”

L249-252 long sentence – split into two?

Discussion section – referring to tables/figures not needed in Discussion.

L259 “…based on their tolerance of shade and edge effects.

Table 4 caption:  distance (not distant)      and why not give back transformed volume to make this more interpretable?

L287-294 Move this para down into next subsection instead of writing about how it will be discussed in the next subsection.

L300 Douglas-fir

L308 Add a sentence “For example, [add where you would put a specific species using your results]

L315 due to

L319-20 Provide citation for “shallow-rooted”

L377 B.C. written in full earlier. Be consistent.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

There is not any comment.

Author Response

There is no further comments to address in 2nd revision of the manuscript from reviewer-1. We thank reviewer-1 for helping authors in improving the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors are commended for redoing the analysis correctly with mixed effects regression to address the pseudoreplication problem. It would be interesting to see reported the estimates for random effects with discussion of variability in the data. 

I still think that "case study" should be included in title, and at very minimum a frank discussion of the serious limitation of only having two sites and hence no inference to other sites is appropriate. 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx