A Transition-Matrix Growth Model and Equilibrium Curve for Natural Forests in Jiangxi Province

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review on: A transition-matrix growth model and equilibrium curve for natural forests in Jiangxi Province

General comments:

1.      The main contribution of the manuscript is to define the optimal equilibrium curve using the transfer-matrix growth model.

2.      Results are illustrated using real world dataset. Nothing author present here is new. See, for example: Liang J, Picard N. Matrix Model of Forest Dynamics: An Overview and Outlook. For. Sci. 2013, 59, 359-378.

3.      The introduction is similar to a review article, but does not emphasize the novelty of the work, does not compare it to continuous models, and does not state its contribution to the field of stand growth modeling.

4.      It should be noted that the authors do not have a robust validation data set to assess accuracy.

Specific comments:

Line 75: … can be divided into the following model types: whole-stand, individual-tree, and transition-matrix… Such a classification is quite limited, because the transition-matrix growth model is only a certain selected approximation of the continuous growth models described by stochastic differential equations and Fokker-Planck-type partial derivative equations, which have been described in the literature of tree and stand growth since the second half of the 20th century until now.

Line 122:  How many measurement cycles were used?

Line 124: How were the plots selected for the validation set and why is their number so small?

Line 135: Describe the time t, as this is the age range that is critical to the accuracy of the model.

Equation: Correct ‚Gi‘. Since the matrices G_i and R_i do not show any relationship between different tree species, it is appropriate to present the cumbersome equation 2 separately for each tree species. M and n are not defined.

Line 138: Describe the requirements for the random error Ɛ(t).

Lines 133-140: The meaning of the matrix G_i in equation 1 is not specified.

Line 140: G and R are matrixes of numbers, not functions.
Lines 133-148: According to the definition of Matrixes D and R, they do not depend on time t, so they cannot have index t in Equation 1.

Line 149: I would suggest replacing the word 'diversity' with ‘diversity index’, as it has a specific meaning in forest and ecological diversity studies.

Line 151: Write a formula for the definition of b_ij and Equations 5 and 6 given earlier.

Equation 4: Explain why g_ij +1 is modeled and not g_ij?. The explanatory variables on the right-hand side of Equation 4 must depend on tree species.

Equation 5: Both sides of equation 5 must depend on the diameter class j, moreover, i varies up to sp and not up to m.

Equation 6: Both sides of equation 6 must depend on tree species i, and j varies to dc instead of n.

Equations 7 and 8: Please correctly write the indices on both sides of the equalities. X_iis not defined.

Line 162: Normally, the standard normal cumulative distribution function and density function are written by Φ and φ.

Line 164: β is not a parameter, it consists of vectors of parameters. Make them up.

Line 168: … using least squares from data... Arrange the sentence.

Line 197: k₀ is the normalizing constant for the negative exponential distribution. On what basis did you claim that at any given age the tree diameters in the stand will be distributed according to the same negative exponential distribution?
Line 200: What would integrating Equations 13 and 14 mean when you are only calculating the ratio in Equation 14?

Line 206: In this paper, you use several different letters to indicate the same number of diameter classes. Arrange it..

Lines 191-215: These studies were carried out for a separate tree species.

Line 246: State which equation.

Lines 247-266: Further research, accompanied by the very low coefficient of determination presented in Tables 2-4, significantly reduces their practical power.

With this in mind, I propose a major revision of this article.

The language of the article should be improved.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments on the manuscript, we have carefully revised each of the comments you provided. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I am grateful for the opportunity to review the article titled "A transition-matrix growth model and equilibrium curve for natural forests in Jiangxi Province." The article addresses a timely topic and offers a solution to an interesting scientific problem. Overall, I highly appreciate the manuscript.

However, there are several points that need to be addressed:

1. Quality of illustrations: Unfortunately, I was unable to discern the content of all the figures in the manuscript due to their low quality. Please improve the quality of the figures.

2. Figure 1: Despite its poor quality, it is evident that neighboring countries of China are not indicated, and geographical features, oceans, and seas are not labeled. Please provide clear labeling and context in Figure 1.

3. In Section 1, the review of sources is primarily focused on Chinese references. It is essential to broaden the review of sources by including authors from other countries and conducting a more comprehensive literature analysis.

4. Reviewing Sections 3 and 4 is challenging due to the poor quality of the figures. Please ensure that the figures are of sufficient quality to allow for a proper review.

5. I did not find a clearly delineated subsection on the prospects for further research and the limitations of the study. Please include a dedicated section discussing future research directions and the study's limitations.

6. It is unclear why a table with only four rows has been placed in a separate appendix. Please provide a rationale for this decision or consider incorporating the table into the main body of the article.

Thank you for considering these suggestions for improving the manuscript. I look forward to reviewing the revised version.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments on the manuscript, we have carefully revised each of the comments you provided.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately, the authors completely ignored my comments.

Careful language editing is required

Author Response

We've revised the entire manuscript to address the language problems you've raised, so please check to see if it's been improved!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept in present form

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere thanks to you for further optimizing the language of the manuscript, please check out the.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf