Analysis of the Effects of Windthrows on the Microbiological Properties of the Forest Soils and Their Natural Regeneration

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, please review the text according to a few explanatory notes I have added on MS. I should especially point out that the Introduction section is very long and contains information that does not reflect the essence of the study. Please shorten the Introcution. You should also clearly explain why you chose DA and NF from the biological characteristics. Sincerely.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Cover Letter Reviewer I

 

Thank you for your effort in reviewing our manuscript. Your observations were concrete and on the subject. The result was an almost completely restructured manuscript. Thus:

 

1. The Introduction section has been shortened as suggested.
2. In the Introduction, a paragraph has been introduced that clearly defines the problem addressed and explains the main argument (motivation).
3. All references have been checked and corrected. The cross-reference links, have been redone. The number of cited scientific papers
4. A sketch of the location of the experimental field, including the geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the replicate plots was added.
5. You should not split the table into separate page. 8.
6. Letter size revised (Palatino Linotype 9) page 9.
7. Why did you choose DA and NF? Couldn't there be other biological soil indicators? You should explain this.

•  

This paper is so large because it is part of a PhD thesis. The doctoral student, during his master's studies, worked on the inventory of trees affected by windthrow in the mentioned area. In order to follow the evolution, the physical and chemical properties of the soils were analyzed. These were not sufficient to monitor the evolution of natural regenerations in the three tree species. Biological properties were considered to have more relevance. As the three species of trees have richer or poorer foliage, the amount of organic matter from soil, can be evaluated by the activity of soil microorganisms involved in the humification process. This can be done by analyzing their activity. Thus, the DA analysis was chosen because it highlights the activity of all mycoorganisms in the soil (bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, etc.). But in the conditions of some acidic soils, it is known from the forest background that the humification of organic matter is predominantly carried out by fungi. For this reason, the inventory of Fungi-forming colonies (NF) was resorted to. In addition, NF can highlight the effect of the richness or poverty of the leaf apparatus removed by harvesting the woody mass.

8. The size of the Conclusions has been reduced as much as possible.

Thanks again for your suggestions. I am hopeful that after restructuring the manuscript it will be accepted for publication.

 

Prof. dr. eng. habil Sabău Nicu Cornel

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Summary

The manuscript addresses and presents basically interesting relationships between wind-damaged areas and microbial activity in soils in forests. For me, the manuscript is much too long, too technical, too detailed, and not optimally written in terms of language. I suggest a shortening of the manuscript to half the number of pages, which can certainly be achieved quickly by omitting and figures and tables, but mainly text.

 

General comments

- The Abstract is too technical. I suggest omitting most of the technical details. The Abstract should be accessible to the largest possible proportion of the readership.

- Please consistently use abbreviations of units throughout the whole text. Currently, it is a mix of abbreviations and long names.

- Please shorten the Introduction to the minimum required to answer the research question and to reach the goals. In its current form, the Introduction is too long and too broad.

- Please avoid multiple definitions of abbreviations, e. g., SOC. It is sufficient to define abbreviations once in the text at the first appearance.

- Please search the whole text for “spurce” and replace it with “spruce”.

 

Specific comments

P1L19: What is the “forestry fund”? Do you mean “forest ecosystems” or just “forests”? Please clarify.

 

P1L20-L22: Windthrow and “sustainable forest management” are not necessarily to opposite directions. Windthrows can also have positive economic and ecological impacts, e. g., they enhance biodiversity. Therefore, I suggest rephrasing these lines to make this clearer.

 

P1L27: From a linguistic perspective, it makes no sense to use colon twice in a sentence. Please change the wording.

 

P1L27-L30: What do you mean by “bifactorial”? You stratify the data according to tree species, windthrows and felling, as far as I understand it. Furthermore, you study “soil profiles”. Which two factors do you mean? Please provide a clearer statement.

 

P4L196-L197: What is the difference between “windbreaks” and “windthrow” here? Windbreaks are a fraction of windthrow. Please clarify.

 

P5L211: Please remove “Error! Reference source not found.”, here, and everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

 

P5L227: “Damage” in this context is an uncountable noun. Therefore, I suggest replacing it with “damage”, here, and everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

 

P5L232: Please correct “[6161].“ to “[61].” Also do this for similar typos everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

 

P5L250-L254: What is the purpose of presenting a list of techniques without providing the context for their application. I suggest deleting these lines.

 

P6L306-P7L311: Here you provide a better description of your “bifactorial” approach. To me, this approach seems to be different from the approach mentioned in the Abstract.

 

P7L314, Figure 1: What is the importance of this figure? Does it provide any new information? If not, I suggest deleting it.

 

P7L316, caption of Figure 1: What is “The experimental device”? Do you mean the research design? If so, please replace “experimental device", here, and everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

 

P7L325, Table 1: Please replace “altitude” with “elevation”. Altitude is the height about ground. Elevation is the height above sea level, which is presented here.

 

P8L340, Figure 2: What is the importance of Figure 2? I see a macroscopic image of the profiles with vertical yellow lines. If there is no scientific meaning in these images for this study, I suggest deleting them.

 

P9L376, equation 2: Please check the presentation of “Sc” in the formula. Is it used for every horizon i? If so, use the subscript with the variable.

 

P10L452: Please provide complete information on MS Excel.

 

P11L463, Table 2: Please replace “Depths” with “Depth”. Please replace “cm.” with “cm”.

 

P12L513, Figure 3: This figure is too small. It is hardly possible assessing its contents.

 

P13L520: Please homogenize the thousand separators in the text. Here, you use the comma. At other occasions, no separators are used.

 

P13L525: Please provide the correct citation for “Axer et al.”

 

P13L539: Please provide the correct citation for “Varrik”. It is inappropriate to mention the author’s name at the beginning of the paragraph and the corresponding citation at the end of the paragraph.

 

P15L624, Table 3: Please replace “windthrows” with “windthrow”. In this context it is used as an uncountable noun.

 

P16L664, Table 4: Please replace “windthrows” with “windthrow”. In this context it is used as an uncountable noun.

 

P17L687, Figure 4: Please revise this figure: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “mg formazan” given the caption “The influence of tree species and windthrows on CDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Correct “Afecteed”. Please remove the redundant legend.

 

P17L709, Table 5: Please revise this display item: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “g formazan” given the caption “The influence of species and windthrows on CDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Which species do you mean? Tree species?

 

P19L735, Figure 5: Please revise this figure: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “mg formazan” given the caption “The influence of tree species and windthrows on PDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Correct “Afecteed”. Please remove the redundant legend.

 

P19L751, Table 5: Please revise this display item: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “g formazan” given the caption “The influence of species and windthrows on PDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Which species do you mean? Tree species? Please replace “Speciee” with “Tree species”.

 

P21L784, Figure 6: Please revise this figure: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “mg formazan” given the caption “The influence of tree species and windthrows on PDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Correct “Afecteed”. Please remove the redundant legend.

 

P21L784, Figure 6: How can CFU be negative as indicated by the error bar? Is there any reason? Please check.

 

P27L1006, caption of Figure 8: What is your definition of “windthrow intensity” in the context of “surface”, “slope”, and “age”? Regression in subplot b) seems to be driven by two data points.

 

P29L1077-L1109: The conclusions are hardly conclusions. There are mostly repetition and summary. Please create a dominance of conclusions in this section.

See Comments and Suggestions to the Authors.

Author Response

Cover Letter Reviewer II

 

Thank you for your effort in reviewing our manuscript. Your observations were concrete and on the subject. The comments related to the correctness of the English language have been fixed. The manuscript was checked by 2 people. The first graduate of the faculty of foreign languages (English) and the second university teacher of English. The result was an almost completely restructured manuscript. Thus:

 

The manuscript addresses and presents basically interesting relationships between wind-damaged areas and microbial activity in soils in forests. For me, the manuscript is much too long, too technical, too detailed, and not optimally written in terms of language. I suggest a shortening of the manuscript to half the number of pages, which can certainly be achieved quickly by omitting and figures and tables, but mainly text.

 

*The manuscript is much too long, too technical and too detailed, because it represents a doctoral thesis in the field of forestry, because it uses technical terms from forestry and forest soils, being effectively a scientific, research paper. I tried a shortening of the manuscript, by cutting some tables and portions of text, but at half the number of pages it is impossible. It is required to describe the current state of research in the field and the materials and methods used so that they can be reproduced

 

 

General comments

- The Abstract is too technical. I suggest omitting most of the technical details. The Abstract should be accessible to the largest possible proportion of the readership.

* The abstract was reduced to 242 words, with some overly technical details removed from the results area.

 

- Please consistently use abbreviations of units throughout the whole text. Currently, it is a mix of abbreviations and long names.

* The use of abbreviations has been checked and those that are not strictly necessary have been eliminated.

 

- Please shorten the Introduction to the minimum required to answer the research question and to reach the goals. In its current form, the Introduction is too long and too broad.

* The introduction has been shortened by about a page.

 

- Please avoid multiple definitions of abbreviations, e. g., SOC. It is sufficient to define abbreviations once in the text at the first appearance.

* All abbreviations have been checked.

 

- Please search the whole text for “spurce” and replace it with “spruce”.

* In the manuscript, "spurce" was replaced by "spruce"

 

 

 

Specific comments

P1L19: What is the “forestry fund”? Do you mean “forest ecosystems” or just “forests”? Please clarify.

* The land fund represents all the land within the borders of a state. The forest fund, a component of the land fund, represents all the lands with forestry use.

 

P1L20-L22: Windthrow and “sustainable forest management” are not necessarily to opposite directions. Windthrows can also have positive economic and ecological impacts, e. g., they enhance biodiversity. Therefore, I suggest rephrasing these lines to make this clearer.

* The two sentences have been reformulated.

 

P1L27: From a linguistic perspective, it makes no sense to use colon twice in a sentence. Please change the wording.

* The necessary correction has been made

 

P1L27-L30: What do you mean by “bifactorial”? You stratify the data according to tree species, windthrows and felling, as far as I understand it. Furthermore, you study “soil profiles”. Which two factors do you mean? Please provide a clearer statement.

* Bifactorial means an experiment in which the influences of 2 factors are studied. How the trees were affected by the windthrows. These influences (tree uprooting) are also dependent on the stratification, the component horizons of the soils.

 

P4L196-L197: What is the difference between “windbreaks” and “windthrow” here? Windbreaks are a fraction of windthrow. Please clarify.

* The effects of windstorms can be tree breaking or more seriously the uprooting of trees, called windtrhrow in forestry.

 

P5L211: Please remove “Error! Reference source not found.”, here, and everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

* All reference errors have been revised or removed.

 

P5L227: “Damage” in this context is an uncountable noun. Therefore, I suggest replacing it with “damage”, here, and everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

* I did not understand. Should I replace "damage" with "damage"? Works cited use this term.

 

P5L232: Please correct “[6161].“ to “[61].” Also do this for similar typos everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

* All citations to references in the text have been corrected.

 

P5L250-L254: What is the purpose of presenting a list of techniques without providing the context for their application. I suggest deleting these lines.

* The aim is to list the methods used in Forestry for field research. The context of their application is further developed in the Materials and Methods chapter.

 

P6L306-P7L311: Here you provide a better description of your “bifactorial” approach. To me, this approach seems to be different from the approach mentioned in the Abstract.

* Thank you ! In the abstract space is limited. Only the type of experiment needs to be mentioned. The detailed description is given in the Materials and Methods Chapter.

 

P7L314, Figure 1: What is the importance of this figure? Does it provide any new information? If not, I suggest deleting it.

* Figure 1 suggested the location of the subdivided blocks and replicate plots. Because we have inserted another figure with the location of the experimental field, it is cut.

 

P7L316, caption of Figure 1: What is “The experimental device”? Do you mean the research design? If so, please replace “experimental device", here, and everywhere else in the text where appropriate.

* Figure 1 has been removed. It was replaced in the text "The experimental device" with "The research design"

 

P7L325, Table 1: Please replace “altitude” with “elevation”. Altitude is the height about ground. Elevation is the height above sea level, which is presented here.

* Changed altitude to elevation everywhere.

 

P8L340, Figure 2: What is the importance of Figure 2? I see a macroscopic image of the profiles with vertical yellow lines. If there is no scientific meaning in these images for this study, I suggest deleting them.

* They cannot be deleted. Removed the soil properties table. I enlarged the image. Now the horizons that make up the soil profile are also differentiated.

 

P9L376, equation 2: Please check the presentation of “Sc” in the formula. Is it used for every horizon i? If so, use the subscript with the variable.

* The equation has been corrected. Sc replaced by Sci.

 

P10L452: Please provide complete information on MS Excel.

* Excel 2016:

 

 

P11L463, Table 2: Please replace “Depths” with “Depth”. Please replace “cm.” with “cm”.

* Table 2 has been removed to preserve images of soil profiles.

 

P12L513, Figure 3: This figure is too small. It is hardly possible assessing its contents.

* Figure 3 has been removed because there is a broad description of the inventoried species.

 

P13L520: Please homogenize the thousand separators in the text. Here, you use the comma. At other occasions, no separators are used.

* I removed the commas.

 

P13L525: Please provide the correct citation for “Axer et al.”

* Was corrected.

 

P13L539: Please provide the correct citation for “Varrik”. It is inappropriate to mention the author’s name at the beginning of the paragraph and the corresponding citation at the end of the paragraph.

* OK

 

P15L624, Table 3: Please replace “windthrows” with “windthrow”. In this context it is used as an uncountable noun.

* OK

 

P16L664, Table 4: Please replace “windthrows” with “windthrow”. In this context it is used as an uncountable noun.

* OK

 

P17L687, Figure 4: Please revise this figure: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “mg formazan” given the caption “The influence of tree species and windthrows on CDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Correct “Afecteed”. Please remove the redundant legend.

* Figure 4 was deleted

 

P17L709, Table 5: Please revise this display item: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “g formazan” given the caption “The influence of species and windthrows on CDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Which species do you mean? Tree species?

* g formazan is the unit of measure for Current  dehydrogenase activity (CDA). (see Material and Methods Chapter - Dehydrogenase Activity, P 10-11, L 437-440) It is obvious that we are talking about tree species because this is the A factor studied.

 

P19L735, Figure 5: Please revise this figure: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “mg formazan” given the caption “The influence of tree species and windthrows on PDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Correct “Afecteed”. Please remove the redundant legend.

* Figure 5 was deleted.

 

P19L751, Table 5: Please revise this display item: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “g formazan” given the caption “The influence of species and windthrows on PDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Which species do you mean? Tree species? Please replace “Speciee” with “Tree species”.

* g formazan is the unit of measure for Potential Dehydrogenase Activity (PDA). (see Material and Methods Chapter - Dehydrogenase Activity, P 10-11, L 437-440) It is obvious that we are talking about tree species because this is the A factor studied.

 

P21L784, Figure 6: Please revise this figure: Its caption is cryptic. What is the meaning of “mg formazan” given the caption “The influence of tree species and windthrows on PDA”. Display items together with their caption should be self-explaining. What is the meaning of “sessile”? Is this a tree species? Please correct “Spurce” to “Spruce”. Correct “Afecteed”. Please remove the redundant legend.

* Figure 6 was deleted.

 

P21L784, Figure 6: How can CFU be negative as indicated by the error bar? Is there any reason? Please check.

* The error bar indicates the deviation of the errors from the mean. As we have 3 repetitions the mean was calculated from 3 values. Therefore, a value is lower than the average.

 

P27L1006, caption of Figure 8: What is your definition of “windthrow intensity” in the context of “surface”, “slope”, and “age”? Regression in subplot b) seems to be driven by two data points.

* The intensity of windthrows expresses the greater or lesser effect on tree species. The intensity of windfall expresses the greater or lesser effect on tree species. The equation is established from 9 pairs of data. The curve of the equation always passes through the point that represents the mean of the data pairs. Here we have only one point NOT two.

 

P29L1077-L1109: The conclusions are hardly conclusions. There are mostly repetition and summary. Please create a dominance of conclusions in this section.

* The conclusions have been restructured by removing repetitions and focused to emphasize the essentials.

 

Thanks again for your suggestions. I am hopeful that after restructuring the manuscript it will be accepted for publication.

 

Prof. dr. eng. habil Sabău Nicu Cornel

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I found this a very interesting paper dealing with a current topic. Nevertheless, the manuscript needs to be streamlined and several aspects, particularly the citations, need to be re-checked. Please find below my detailed comments:

 

-The Abstract is much too long (should have around 200 words maximum according to the instructions for authors).

 

-Abstract: I would recommend using subheadings (Background and Objectives, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions).

 

-Abstract: Species authorities should be given consistently upon first mentioning. Currently, species authorities are only given for Picea abies and Fagus sylvatica but not for Quercus petraea.

 

-Introduction: The Introduction is also too long. I understand that the topic is complex but an Introduction should give a brief background of the topic and highlight the hypotheses tested. Such a long introduction gives the impression of a short review paper rather than an introduction of an article.

 

-Introduction: There are problems with many citations, e.g. lines 73 (here, e.g., it is 99 instead of 9 and reference 8 is missing), 84, 94, 106, 140, 157, 159, 169, 196, 201, 204, 221.

 

-Material and Methods: Again, there are problems with the citations, e.g. lines 265, 277, 312, 319, 325, 348, 356, 395, 433, 443, 450.

 

-Results and Discussions: Again, there are problems with the citations.

 

-Results and Discussions: The legend at the bottom of Figure 4 can be deleted as the colors are already explained in the first column of the table included in Figure 4.

 

-Results and Discussions: The levels of significance are not explained, although different numbers of asterisks / zeros are included in the tables. This needs to be added.

 

-The present study examines the effect of windthrows four years after the event. However, no temporal course is investigated. Are samples available also from other time points after the windthrow? Examining the differences between different time points would be of great interest.

 

-Judging from the tables, three levels of significance are used but not explained as mentioned above. In describing the level of significance, terms like “distinctly significant” are used. Although there is no ubiquitous definition of significance levels, terms like “highly significant” are more commonly used.

 

-The Conclusions section in my opinion is also too long and should briefly summarize the main conclusions. Other information should preferably be included only in the Discussion section.

The language quality is mostly fine, some sentences are a bit hard to read and I recommend checking the sentences for readability throughout.

Author Response

Cover Letter Reviewer III

 

Thank you for your effort in reviewing our manuscript. Your observations were concrete and on the subject. The comments related to the correctness of the English language have been fixed. The manuscript was checked by 2 people. The first graduate of the faculty of foreign languages (English) and the second university teacher of English. The result was an almost completely restructured manuscript. Thus:

 

I found this a very interesting paper dealing with a current topic. Nevertheless, the manuscript needs to be streamlined and several aspects, particularly the citations, need to be re-checked. Please find below my detailed comments:

 

-The Abstract is much too long (should have around 200 words maximum according to the instructions for authors).

* The abstract was reduced.

 

-Abstract: I would recommend using subheadings (Background and Objectives, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions).

* Yes, your recommendation was followed

 

-Abstract: Species authorities should be given consistently upon first mentioning. Currently, species authorities are only given for Picea abies and Fagus sylvatica but not for Quercus petraea.

            * The issue has been rectified.

 

-Introduction: The Introduction is also too long. I understand that the topic is complex but an Introduction should give a brief background of the topic and highlight the hypotheses tested. Such a long introduction gives the impression of a short review paper rather than an introduction of an article.

            * The introduction has been reduced by 1-2 pages

 

-Introduction: There are problems with many citations, e.g. lines 73 (here, e.g., it is 99 instead of 9 and reference 8 is missing), 84, 94, 106, 140, 157, 159, 169, 196, 201, 204, 221.

            * All reference errors have been revised or removed.

 

-Material and Methods: Again, there are problems with the citations, e.g. lines 265, 277, 312, 319, 325, 348, 356, 395, 433, 443, 450.

            * All reference errors have been revised or removed.

 

-Results and Discussions: Again, there are problems with the citations.

* All reference errors have been revised or removed.

 

-Results and Discussions: The legend at the bottom of Figure 4 can be deleted as the colors are already explained in the first column of the table included in Figure 4.

* Figure 4 was deleted

 

-Results and Discussions: The levels of significance are not explained, although different numbers of asterisks / zeros are included in the tables. This needs to be added.

            * The statistical processing was done in accordance with the experimental design, using the student t-test. The limit differences for different statistical assurances are thus obtained (LD 5 %; LD 1 % LD 0.1 %).

For the 5% insurance, it is estimated that the difference greater than the DL value is statistically significant and is marked with * or o. * represents a positive difference compared to the control and a negative difference.

For the insurance of 1%, the difference greater than DL is considered to be distinctly significant (** or oo).

For the insurance of 0.1 % it is estimated that the difference greater than DL is highly significant (*** or ooo)

 

-The present study examines the effect of windthrows four years after the event. However, no temporal course is investigated. Are samples available also from other time points after the windthrow? Examining the differences between different time points would be of great interest.

            * Due to the short period that has passed since the event in the fall of 1997, we have no recorded data from the following years. We aim to resume investigations 8 or 10 years after the event.

 

-Judging from the tables, three levels of significance are used but not explained as mentioned above. In describing the level of significance, terms like “distinctly significant” are used. Although there is no ubiquitous definition of significance levels, terms like “highly significant” are more commonly used.

            * Differences greater than LD = 5 % and less than LD = 1% are statistically significant at the 95.0 % confidence level, p < 0.05. They are distinctly significant at the 99 % confidence level and p < 0.01, differences greater than LD = 1 % and less than LD = 0.1 %. Differences greater than LD = 0.1 % are statistically highly significant.

 

-The Conclusions section in my opinion is also too long and should briefly summarize the main conclusions. Other information should preferably be included only in the Discussion section.

* Conclusions have been reduced in accordance with your comments.

 

The language quality is mostly fine, some sentences are a bit hard to read and I recommend checking the sentences for readability throughout.

            * The English language has been revised throughout the manuscript.

 

Thanks again for your suggestions. I am hopeful that after restructuring the manuscript it will be accepted for publication.

 

Prof. dr. eng. habil Sabău Nicu Cornel

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, thank you for implementing my comments. The revised manuscript is fine in my opinion and I recommend acceptance.