Forest Biomass Policies and Regulations in the United States of America

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I am sure it was no easy task to compile that draft about forest biomass policies and regulations in such a huge country like the U.S.. However, what I am missing is a more precise differentiation between ownership types (national/state land/private land), forest management types (managed forests or conservation/preservation areas), type of biomass use (material or energetic.). By the way, I think the material use is underrepresented in the considerations. In its present form, the abstract does not represent the topics of the manuscript adequately as it is focusing on hazard-fuel treatments. That means either title and abstract have to be adapted or the manuscript should be modified. Further comments are inserted in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Mr. Vatavu V. Vlad Viorel

Assistant Editor, MDPI Romania

Forests

 

RE: Forests-1862327

 

Thank you for the opportunity to revise our manuscript “Forest biomass policies and regulations in the United States of America”.  We are grateful to the reviewers for their comments.  I have uploaded responses to each reviewer separately and they are combined here, as well.  In addition, I have uploaded the track change version of our manuscript and the clean copy in the MDPI format.  In addition, I wish to note that the references are still in alphabetical order and not numbered.  We will number and re-order the references once the final version is accepted.  Our responses to the review comments are in italics. 

 

Reviewer 1.

Comments in the uploaded pdf are responded to there and not included here. 

 

More precise information on ownerships, forest management type, and type of biomass use. Thank you for this suggestion. We could not give anything more precise with regard to this request.  Policy, regulations, and laws are developed by both federal and state entities and drilling down to specifics would require another paper! 

 

The abstract does not represent the topics of the manuscript adequately. We have re-written the abstract to more clearly define our paper. 

 

Reviewer 2.

1. The manuscript is made in a non-MDPI template. The formatting needs to be completely revised. Since the author instructions said that the template was ‘encouraged’, I did not format. This is now completed however, except for the numbering of references which will be done when there are no further revisions.
2. There are some hyperlinks in the abstract. That is not appropriate, as the abstract then becomes a part of article meta-data. Please reformulate the links in a plain-text style. Also, the abstract is too vague and does not reflect the most convex results of your study. Some figures- or facts-supported details are very welcome there. Thanks for noting this. The hyperlinks have been removed and, as also suggested by Reviewer 1, the abstract has been re-written to describe the scope of the review paper.
3. There are no images in the text. However, you may consider to create some vizualization that supports your main implications. Thanks for this suggestion. We do include a new figure 1 that shows the context of what the paper is about. In addition, Figure 2 highlights renewable fuel standard feedstocks for biofuels.
4. There are no economic figures. How much money were spent on the implementation of this or that regulation? What is the worth of different parts of forest biomass sector in the US? Is that really important at the world-scale. This is probably the most critical point. Please consider enriching the text with this kind of economic analysis. This is difficult to do since each state has different regulations and the economics of those are tied to local decisions. However, we did add a few economic statements in Section 4. State Policies Related to Woody Biomass and in the newly revised abstract.
5. The conclusion needs to be rewritten and sufficiently extended. Now it is presented in a bit journalist-style. Please make it more temperate in style and concise. It is also important to add some eye-catching details. Thank you. We support the short conclusion paragraph (now re-written) with Section 6. Increasing the use of woody biomass in the U.S., and Section 7. Future considerations. Expanding the conclusion section too much more will result in redundancies. However, we did reorganize and add more information to the conclusion section. 

 

Reviewer 3.

Interesting and very interesting paper. However, the paper must be thoroughly revised in order to be published. The text is too extensive and should be divided into sub-paragraphs to make the reading easier. Furthermore, the terminology and structure allows understanding to a very narrow target of scientific readers. I suggest summarizing some information with the help of info-graphics. The English language needs to be improved with final revision by a native English speaker.

I recommend rejecting the paper and recommending re-submission after performing the suggested thorough reviews.

              Thank you for these comments.  The paper has been revised and extraneous material has been removed.  Although we did have sections noted, we have added in some additional subheadings.  This review is meant to highlight where U.S. policy is redundant, misleading, and confusing for expanding biomass use for bioenergy and bioproduct development and production.  Our goal was to highlight a few areas that need immediate consideration by agencies and policymakers to increase the pace and scale of harvest operations and slash disposal.  We agree that this might be a narrow focus but hope that our work will also help inform other countries seeking to increase biomass use. 

              Thanks for the suggestion of an infographic.  We have added a pictorial figure that highlights the interconnectedness of biomass production with several facets that we see as important to address. 

              The language has been updated by the first author who is a native English speaker and who has been an editor for 30 years.  I hope it is much clearer now.

 

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to revise this manuscript and for the constructive comments that have improved our original draft. 

 

Best regards,

Deborah S. Page-Dumroese

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper deals with an important topic of assessing the forest biomass regulations in the United States. I see some contribution to the field. It is clearly written, but suffers from some issues that need to be addressed before the paper could be published.

1. The manuscript is made in a non-MDPI template. The formatting needs to be completely revised.

2. There are some hyperlinks in the abstract. That is not appropriate, as the abstract then becomes a part of article meta-data. Please reformulate the links in a plain-text style. Also, the abstract is too vague and does not reflect the most convex results of your study. Some figures- or facts-supported details are very welcome there.

3. There are no images in the text. However, you may consider to create some vizualization that supports your main implications.

4. There are no economic figures. How much money were spent on the implementation of this or that regulation? What is the worth of different parts of forest biomass sector in the US? Is that really important at the world-scale. This is probably the most critical point. Please consider enriching the text with this kind of economic analysis.

5. The conclusion needs to be rewritten and sufficiently extended. Now it is presented in a bit journalist-style. Please make it more temperate in style and concise. It is also important to add some eye-catching details.

Author Response

The paper deals with an important topic of assessing the forest biomass regulations in the United States. I see some contribution to the field. It is clearly written, but suffers from some issues that need to be addressed before the paper could be published.

1. The manuscript is made in a non-MDPI template. The formatting needs to be completely revised. Since the author instructions said that the template was ‘encouraged’, I did not format. This is now completed however, except for the numbering of references which will be done when there are no further revisions.
2. There are some hyperlinks in the abstract. That is not appropriate, as the abstract then becomes a part of article meta-data. Please reformulate the links in a plain-text style. Also, the abstract is too vague and does not reflect the most convex results of your study. Some figures- or facts-supported details are very welcome there. Thanks for noting this. The hyperlinks have been removed and the abstract has been re-written to describe the scope of the review paper.
3. There are no images in the text. However, you may consider to create some vizualization that supports your main implications. We do include a new figure 1 that shows the context of what the paper is about. In addition, Figure 2 highlights renewable fuel standard feedstocks for biofuels.
4. There are no economic figures. How much money were spent on the implementation of this or that regulation? What is the worth of different parts of forest biomass sector in the US? Is that really important at the world-scale. This is probably the most critical point. Please consider enriching the text with this kind of economic analysis. This is difficult to do since each state has different regulations and the economics of those are tied to local decisions. However, we did add a few economic statements in Section 4. State Policies Related to Woody Biomass
5. The conclusion needs to be rewritten and sufficiently extended. Now it is presented in a bit journalist-style. Please make it more temperate in style and concise. It is also important to add some eye-catching details. We support the short conclusion paragraph (now re-written) with Section 6. Increasing the use of woody biomass in the U.S., and Section 7. Future considerations. Expanding the conclusion section too much more will result in redundancies. However, we did reorganize and add more information to the conclusion section. 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Interesting and very interesting paper. However, the paper must be thoroughly revised in order to be published. The text is too extensive and should be divided into sub-paragraphs to make the reading easier. Furthermore, the terminology and structure allows understanding to a very narrow target of scientific readers. I suggest summarizing some information with the help of info-graphics. The English language needs to be improved with final revision by a native English speaker.

I recommend rejecting the paper and recommending re-submission after performing the suggested thorough reviews.

Author Response

Interesting and very interesting paper. However, the paper must be thoroughly revised in order to be published. The text is too extensive and should be divided into sub-paragraphs to make the reading easier. Furthermore, the terminology and structure allows understanding to a very narrow target of scientific readers. I suggest summarizing some information with the help of info-graphics. The English language needs to be improved with final revision by a native English speaker.

I recommend rejecting the paper and recommending re-submission after performing the suggested thorough reviews.

Thank you for these comments.  The paper has been revised and extraneous material has been removed.  Although we did have sections noted, we have added in some additional subheadings.  This review is meant to highlight where U.S. policy is redundant, misleading, and confusing for expanding biomass use for bioenergy and bioproduct development and production.  Our goal was to highlight a few areas that need immediate consideration by agencies and policymakers to increase the pace and scale of harvest operations and slash disposal.  We agree that this might be a narrow focus, but hope that out work will also help inform other countries seeking to increase biomass use. 

Thanks for the suggestion of an infographic.  We have added a pictorial figure that highlights the interconnectedness of biomass production with several facets that we see as important to address. 

The language has been updated by the first author who is a native English speaker and who has been an editor for 30 years.  I hope it is much clearer now.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I'm fine with the corrections. Good luck

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has been improved and all suggestions have been done. I suggest ti acceptance the work.