A Comparison of Radial Wood Property Variation on Pinus radiata between an IML PD-400 ‘Resi’ Instrument and Increment Cores Analysed by SilviScan
, Jonathan J. Harrington 2, David M. Drew 3, Marco Lausberg 4, Phillip Muyambo 5, Duncan Watt 5 and David J. Lee 6Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscripti is relevant to a rather narrow audience as it focuses on the technological aspects of comparing the two methods - an IML PD400 (Resi) instrument and SilviScan analyses. Still, it reveals important results on strong correlations between the data obtained from these two technologies. Therefore, the obtained results could be practically useful.
Page 2, line 57 "can data were derived from 22 trees sampled across eight different, mature age radiata" AND line 66 "Twenty trees per site were sampled and felled for sawn timber processing to assess" - are both numbers correct??
There are some problems with the links given in the text, like "Error! Reference source not found", please check this!
Author Response
The manuscripti is relevant to a rather narrow audience as it focuses on the technological aspects of comparing the two methods - an IML PD400 (Resi) instrument and SilviScan analyses. Still, it reveals important results on strong correlations between the data obtained from these two technologies. Therefore, the obtained results could be practically useful.
Response:Given the submission was to a special issue on NDE evaluation of wood properties in standing trees, this comment is surprising. I presume the reviewer was not aware of the special issue. To be fair most individual manuscripts are probably only relevant to a narrow audience which is the nature of science.
Page 2, line 57 "can data were derived from 22 trees sampled across eight different, mature age radiata" AND line 66 "Twenty trees per site were sampled and felled for sawn timber processing to assess" - are both numbers correct??
Response: This maybe a language issue, but I have added “As part of a larger study,…” to line 66 to make this clearer.
There are some problems with the links given in the text, like "Error! Reference source not found", please check this!
Response: This seems to be an issue with the Word document interaction with the reviewer’s system as the issue is not present in the document as supplied or in the reviewed version when opened on my system. Presumably it can be handled editorially by the journal, but I will look at “fixing” the cross referencing approach used (e.g. in the Word menu item References/Cross-reference)
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
It is an interesting article, but it needs some improvement and some additions. I present my comments in a synthetic form.
Line 15
The full trade and Latin name of the species of wood under investigation should be provided: radiata pine (Pinus radiata D.Don).
Lines: 25, 32, 107, 291, Figure 10, 353, 355, 357, 361, 364
The elastic modulus of a material is not the same as the stiffness of a component made from that material. Nomenclature should be unified.
Chapters: Introduction and Discussion
The introduction should be supplemented with information about Pinus radiata D. Don, a species native to North America, which is an important component of forest plantations in Australia and especially in New Zealand. The most important studies on the properties of this type of wood should also be cited. This will be the basis for an in-depth discussion of the results (Chapter discussion).
Chapter: Conclusions
Conclusions should result from the conducted research. The conclusion about future work is correct in the discussion of the results, but too far-reaching in the conclusions in my opinion (hardwood was not tested).
General editing comments:
The manuscript should be prepared according to the Forest template and instructions for authors available on the website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/instructions. This applies to every part of the manuscript including Supplementary Information (Author Contributions, Funding, Conflicts of Interest) and References.
Minor editing errors:
Throughout the manuscript, there should be a standardized notation of units after numbers. One time there is a space and other times it is not (between number and unit):
e.g. Line 17: 13mm; Line 23 10mm; Line 106: 25 μm; Line 107: 2mm; Line 169: 50mm; Line 173 50 mm; …
Many parts of the text do not contain valid references to figures. Instead, we see messages: Error! Reference source not found (Lines:62, 74, 80, 82, 92, 135, 140, 145, 182, 202, 205, 213, 223, 231, 243, 251, 260, 263, 264, 281, 282, 283, 286, 291, 292, 341. This should be corrected.
Figures in the manuscript should be corrected.
Figure 1: The kilometer-scale bar is partially hidden under the x-axis. More details should be marked on the map, e.g. forest area or plantation area of radiata pine (Pinus radiata D.Don).
Figure 2: The photo on the left has an optical strong barrel distortion.
Figure 3: The disc cross-section is too big. The meaning of the symbol * was not explained in the figure caption.
Figures 5 – 10: Pay attention to the captions and markings: unification of the font size, notation of units (kg/m3 or kg·m-3).
The manuscript should be supplemented with the required elements: Contributions, Funding, Conflicts of Interest (Space between lines 376 and 379).
The referenced literature should contain a list of all authors with the required arrangement of surnames and first names and punctuation marks. Along with the articles, the numbers of volumes and pages should be properly written and DOI numbers should be given.
Yours sincerely
Reviewer
Author Response
Reviewer 2
Dear Authors,
It is an interesting article, but it needs some improvement and some additions. I present my comments in a synthetic form.
Line 15
The full trade and Latin name of the species of wood under investigation should be provided: radiata pine (Pinus radiata D.Don).
Response: done
Lines: 25, 32, 107, 291, Figure 10, 353, 355, 357, 361, 364
The elastic modulus of a material is not the same as the stiffness of a component made from that material. Nomenclature should be unified.
Response: This comment is debatable as the two terms, as used in wood anatomical and structural terms are interchangeable (https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/modulus-of-elasticity/; https://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/wood/wood_stiffness.php). However I have reduced the use of stiffness in the manuscript while retaining it as a key word as it is used this way in much of the existing literature eg. Evans, R. and Elic, J., 2001. Rapid prediction of wood stiffness from microfibril angle and density. Forest products journal, 51(3).
Chapters: Introduction and Discussion
The introduction should be supplemented with information about Pinus radiata D. Don, a species native to North America, which is an important component of forest plantations in Australia and especially in New Zealand. The most important studies on the properties of this type of wood should also be cited. This will be the basis for an in-depth discussion of the results (Chapter discussion).
Response. I have added the sentence below at line 38.
Radiata pine is a dominant commercial softwood species across much of the southern hemisphere [6], and for the past several decades there has been considerable emphasis on improving its wood properties.
To further expand would be to distract from the focus of the paper, and there are considerable literature which give this background. Many key studies on wood property variation are already cited as the relate to the specific objectives of the paper, but I have added several more with the above sentence
Chapter: Conclusions
Conclusions should result from the conducted research. The conclusion about future work is correct in the discussion of the results, but too far-reaching in the conclusions in my opinion (hardwood was not tested).
Response: I have indicated that the conclusions relate to radiata pine albeit that I think this was implicit give the title of the manuscript
General editing comments:
The manuscript should be prepared according to the Forest template and instructions for authors available on the website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/instructions. This applies to every part of the manuscript including Supplementary Information (Author Contributions, Funding, Conflicts of Interest) and References.
Response: I have endeavoured to add the missing sections and deal with formatting issues. Reference formatting has been converted to Endnote20 using the forestry MDPI.ens style
Minor editing errors:
Throughout the manuscript, there should be a standardized notation of units after numbers. One time there is a space and other times it is not (between number and unit):
e.g. Line 17: 13mm; Line 23 10mm; Line 106: 25 μm; Line 107: 2mm; Line 169: 50mm; Line 173 50 mm; …
Response: Corrected
Many parts of the text do not contain valid references to figures. Instead, we see messages: Error! Reference source not found (Lines:62, 74, 80, 82, 92, 135, 140, 145, 182, 202, 205, 213, 223, 231, 243, 251, 260, 263, 264, 281, 282, 283, 286, 291, 292, 341. This should be corrected.
Response: My copy uploaded and reviewed copy downloaded did not have this issue. Presumably it is a word version compatibility issue with the reviewers. I presume the journal editors will ensure the final version is correct.
Figures in the manuscript should be corrected.
Figure 1: The kilometer-scale bar is partially hidden under the x-axis. More details should be marked on the map, e.g. forest area or plantation area of radiata pine (Pinus radiata D.Don).
Response: I have adjusted the scale as requested. Marking the plantation area on a map of this scale would make it unreadable as plantations are scattered across the landscape. The figure could easily be deleted as unnecessary; it was added to provide the reader with a relative idea of the location and geographic distribution of the study sites in relation to major cities
Figure 2: The photo on the left has an optical strong barrel distortion.
Response. Yes it does but it still illustrates the sampling point. However the RH image makes the necessary point and I have cropped the LH image.
Figure 3: The disc cross-section is too big. The meaning of the symbol * was not explained in the figure caption.
Response. Asterisk explanation added to caption and the image size reduced
Figures 5 – 10: Pay attention to the captions and markings: unification of the font size, notation of units (kg/m3 or kg·m-3).
Response: Figures have been made consistent
The manuscript should be supplemented with the required elements: Contributions, Funding, Conflicts of Interest (Space between lines 376 and 379).
Response: Sections added
The referenced literature should contain a list of all authors with the required arrangement of surnames and first names and punctuation marks. Along with the articles, the numbers of volumes and pages should be properly written and DOI numbers should be given.
Response: Citation manager updated to Endnote20 updated and MDPI.ens style applied.
