Forest Fire Spread Hazard and Landscape Pattern Characteristics in the Mountainous District, Beijing
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Dear authors,
Thank you for your interesting manuscript. I read it with great pleasure. I have no significant comments.
The work is devoted to a very relevant topic; the results can be used in similar forest ecosystems in East Asia, when categorizing forest lands, as well as forecasting the monitoring and spread of forest fires.
Author Response
Thank the reviewers for their recognition of this study.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The paper examines the hazard of wildfire spread and the characteristics of the landscape pattern in the Mountainous District of Beijing in China.
Overall, the study is described as being specific to the area (Mountain County, Beijing) and it is unclear how it contributes to wider scientific knowledge. From the current perspective, the results may be of interest at the local level, but not to the wider scientific community.
Unfortunately, the title of the manuscript does not correspond to an article that should be recommended for publication in a high-impact journal such as Forests.
Abstract should give a pertinent overview of the work, but not be a mini-version of it.
The level of development of the research problem and background was not sufficiently reflected by the authors in the introduction. The rather short reference list confirms this.
What is the scientific novelty of the study? What was the hypothesis of the research?
The discussion is an unstructured section, with no comparisons to other researchers' results. Therefore, it is not clear how this study contributes to solving the scientific problem, how reliable the results are and how they agree with the latest scientific data that are available in literature.
In general, taking into account the above-mentioned comments and recommendations, it is recommended that the manuscript of the article be substantially revised.
Author Response
1.The author has adjusted and improved the abstract. The objective section remains unchanged, and the data source is removed from the method section, which is described in detail in section 2.2. In the results part, the second result is simplified, and the third result is too detailed. The relevant results of each landscape pattern index and forest fire spread hazard are described and modified to the main landscape characteristics affecting forest fire spread hazard, that is, the principal component analysis results. In the conclusion, in order to avoid duplication, the main landscape features affecting forest fire spread hazard were deleted.
2.The introduction consists of four paragraphs: the first is the background introduction, the second is the forest fire hazard and related research overview, the third is the landscape and forest fire research overview, and the fourth is a brief overview of the study area and this study. The author added English references in the first paragraph to ensure that the research background is placed in an international context, added a relevant representative Chinese study in the second paragraph, added a relevant representative English study in the third paragraph, and added a paragraph in the middle of the second and third paragraphs to review the relevant research on forest fire spread and forest fire hazard. And perfect the corresponding references.
3.The main content of this study includes two parts. One is to establish the index system of forest fire spread hazard assessment and scientifically evaluate the forest fire spread hazard in Beijing Mountainous Districts. The second is to select the representative landscape pattern index, analyze the forest landscape spatial pattern characteristics, and explore the main landscape pattern characteristics affecting the forest fire spread hazard. The scientific novelty of this study corresponds to these two parts. The first novelty is the concept of forest fire spread hazard, which is innovative in theory, and the index system of forest fire spread hazard assessment in the mountainous area of Beijing is constructed based on the influencing factors such as forest fuels, meteorology, topography and fire behavior, which can provide ideas for similar studies in East Asia. The second novel is to establish the relationship between forest fire spread hazard and forest landscape spatial pattern, and analyze the main landscape pattern characteristics and landscape pattern index that affect forest fire spread hazard.
4.The author adds a paragraph to the discussion section. The results are compared with those of similar studies, and the methods are discussed and compared.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Dear authors!
Your article is suitable for publication in Forests.
But at present time article has some disadvantages.
Abstract
Please, rework Abstract. Current version of abstract is too large.
Introduction
Your Introduction section combined with Background section.
But I found only 11 references. It is totally unacceptable. Moreover, the majority of cited works are devoted to China research. Forests is an international journal. Please, make a full size Background section with a number of cited works about 50-60 works using literature around the world. Please, take into account works on forest fire in USA, Canada, Russian Federation, Australia, South Europe to place your work in international context.
Methods
Please, add map with study area.
Please, add map with meteostation location and responsibility zoning.
Please, add research workflow diagram.
Why did you not include ignition sources to Primary indexes?
Why did you not include lightning activity to meteorological fators?
Please, add full size subsection on forest fuel flammability assessment. Provide mathematical methodology in case of theoretical assessment. Provide desription of experimental setup and error analysis in case of instrumental methods to determine forest fuel flammability.
Please, clarify how you determine weight of the evaluation indexes with support of initial data for calculations.
Please, make some comparative analysis of suggested forest fire spread index with another approaches to study forest fire spread known in the scientific periodicals.
Did you use standart functional of ArcGIS 10.2 software or make your own program code within your research? Please, provide graphical expression of applied algorithm used in ArcGIS.
Results
Please, provide brief description of chromatography analysis.
Please, explain how did you obtain each column in Table 2, especially forest fuel flammability.
Please, provide information on types of forest fires (crown and surface) in the context of presented figures 1-4.
Discussion
Please, provide some speculations on forest fire ignition sources, lightning activity and methods to simulate forest fire spread.
Please, provide desription of limitations of presented research.
Please, provide future research desriptions and plans.
Please, provide comparative journey of your results through results presented in Background by another researches.
Conclusions
Acceptable.
References
This section is too small. I estimate relevant quantity of cited works about 60-80 unique cited works. PLease, completely rework References section.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
No comments
Author Response
1.The author has adjusted and improved the abstract. The objective section remains unchanged, and the data source is removed from the method section, which is described in detail in section 2.2. In the results part, the second result is simplified, and the third result is too detailed. The relevant results of each landscape pattern index and forest fire spread hazard are described and modified to the main landscape characteristics affecting forest fire spread hazard, that is, the principal component analysis results. In the conclusion, in order to avoid duplication, the main landscape features affecting forest fire spread hazard were deleted.
2.The introduction consists of four paragraphs: the first is the background introduction, the second is the forest fire hazard and related research overview, the third is the landscape and forest fire research overview, and the fourth is a brief overview of the study area and this study. The author added English references in the first paragraph to ensure that the research background is placed in an international context, added a relevant representative Chinese study in the second paragraph, added a relevant representative English study in the third paragraph, and added a paragraph in the middle of the second and third paragraphs to review the relevant research on forest fire spread and forest fire hazard. And perfect the corresponding references.
3.In Chapter 2.1 of the manuscript, the author adds a map of the study area and marks the locations of 12 weather stations. The kriging interpolation method was used for the spatial interpolation of these meteorological data, data resampling was carried out, and raster data with a 50-meter resolution were masked.
4.The author adds the research workflow diagram in section 2.4.3 of the paper.
5.The premise of the definition of forest fire spread risk is that the fire has already started, as defined in the beginning, so the fire source factor is not taken into account. Lightning is mainly related to lightning fire, and lightning fire is very rare in the mountainous area of Beijing, the research area of this study. Therefore, these two factors were not considered in this study.
6.Niu et al (2000) selected seven stand factors, including plant (tree species) composition, canopy density, stand age, forest type, slope direction, slope, and altitude, as the combustibility components, divided the combustibility of subcompartments in Labagoumen forest area of Beijing into five grades, and obtained the main forest types and vegetation types contained in different combustibility grades. The expression of the original text is not clear enough and easy to produce ambiguity. Based on the research results of Niu et al (2000) and Wang (2010), the author calculate the forest flammability of subcompartment scale. Since this part is not part of the core framework of this manuscript, the relevant expressions in part 2.3.2 of the method were refined and improved in consideration of the length and focus of the manuscript.
References:
(1)Niu S K, Cui G F, Lei M, Li X B, Zhao S T. Study on the forest combustibility and the fire districts in Labagoumen forest region. Journal of Beijing Forestry University, 2000, 22(4), 109-112.
(2)Wang X L. Study on combustibility of forests in Beijing Mountain Area. PhD thesis of Beijing Forestry University, 2010.
7.In this study, the subjective and objective weighting method, which combines analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy weight method, is comprehensively applied to determine the index weight. First, the analytic hierarchy process is used to calculate the subjective weight of the index, and then the entropy weight method is used to determine the objective weight of the index combined with the statistical data. Finally, the subjective weight and objective weight are fused to obtain the comprehensive weight value, which is used as the weight value of the evaluation index. This part is described in section 2.3.3.
8.The author adds a paragraph to the discussion section. The results are compared with those of similar studies, and the methods are discussed and compared.
9.The standard functions commonly used in ArcGIS software are used in this study. Global spatial autocorrelation analysis uses the Spatial Statistics Tools → Analysis mode → Moran I. Local spatial autocorrelation analysis uses the Spatial Statistics Tools → Clustering distribution mapping → Anselin Local Moran I. The others are the most basic tools.
10.At the bottom of each graph, the results of different levels are analyzed. Refer to Section 2.2 for the source of basic data and Section 2.3.3 for the determination of indicator weights. Combined with the actual situation in Beijing area, this study mainly considers the surface fire, not the canopy fire.
11.With reference to reference 18, the author divides the risk of forest fire into the risk of forest fire occurrence and the risk of forest fire spread based on the respective driving factors in the two stages of forest fire occurrence and forest fire spread. Considering the emphasis and length of this paper, the risk of forest fire occurrence is not reflected in this paper. In fact, factors such as ignition sources and lightning should be considered in the risk of forest fires. The discussion of this study consists of 8 paragraphs, which already cover the limitations of this study and the prospects for future research.
12.The author re-sorted the references, and the revised references reached 67.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
I am pleased to report that the authors have made significant improvements to the manuscript in response to my previous comments.
The authors have carefully addressed all the concerns raised during the initial review process. They have extensively revised the manuscript, incorporated clarifications, and provided additional references and analyses. The revised manuscript now presents a comprehensive study of wildfire spread hazard and landscape pattern characteristics in the Mountainous District of Beijing.
This study introduces two scientific novelties: the concept of forest fire spread hazard and the establishment of the relationship between forest fire spread hazard and forest landscape spatial pattern.
The study makes a valuable contribution to the field by investigating the relationship between landscape patterns and wildfire spread hazard, particularly in the context of the Beijing Mountain District. In addition, the findings are well supported by the data presented and properly interpreted in the discussion section.
Based on the improvements made in this revised manuscript, I recommend that it needs minor revisions. I have identified some minor revisions that will further improve the quality of the manuscript:
1. All Latin names should be in italics.
2. The abstract should be corrected and shortened, as the current form does not fulfil the requirements.
Once these minor revisions are completed, I am confident that the manuscript will be suitable for publication in Forests, as it makes a significant contribution to the understanding of wildfire spread hazard and landscape patterns in the Beijing Mountain District.
Author Response
The author have improved the format of Latin names, simplified the abstract, and highlighted the specific changes.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Dear authors!
Thank you for revision.
Some remarks:
Abstract is still too large, especially, Methods section.
Introduction can be improved with extended citing of international works.
I understood and accepted all your comments and explanations on fuel flammability, ignition sources and lightning activity.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
No comments
Author Response
The author have improved the abstract and added 5 international references to the introduction. Relevant changes have been highlighted.
