Assessment of High-Severity Post-Fire Soil Quality and Its Recovery in Dry/Warm Valley Forestlands in Southwest China through Selecting the Minimum Data Set and Soil Quality Index

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The presented article is processed at a high professional level.

·         In the beginning of the article, mention other negative effects of fire in forest areas, not only on soil quality

·         What are the primary influences on the change in water quality after fires, e.g. the nature of the vegetation, physical and chemical properties of the burned area

·       The size of the fire's impact on the soil depends on which factors

·        Is it possible to predict fire behavior using artificial intelligence? Various tools are developed to model the behavior of ground fires. Artificial intelligence can e.g. to help by creating fire behavior algorithms with it. In this way, it is possible to more effectively choose the tactics of deploying firefighters and equipment in the field to reduce the consequences of fire in forest areas

·         On the basis of what assumptions was chosen a control forest area with an interval of 80 m between individual slopes and a sampling area of ​​20 × 20 m

·       Is there an index of soil quality or other indicators for comparison with another dry and warm forest area as in the presented article?

·         On page 6, correct the font size according to the article template

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Congratulations on your research work.

The subject of the paper is a current and important topic since it is a contribution to the study of the effects of forest fires.

The authors present a study of the effects of a high-severity fire in the soil quality and its recovery in dry-warm valley forestlands in southwest China.

The document is well structured and well written.

 

Remarks:

- Section 2.1 – Study area.

In this section, it would be important to include some more objective information about the forest fire, namely the fireline intensity or the height/length of the flames.

- Table 5- Correlation of four soil quality indexes.

Four or eight?

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The impact of fires on the soil is important in pedological and ecological senses. There are no complaints about this article, since it expands the list and geography of research. But at the same time, the methodological novelty of the research is not at all clear.

 

The article is more descriptive and empirical than discursive. A number of patterns have been established that are largely self-evident. The literature review is localized to Chinese literature. However, there is an enormous amount of pyrogenic soils in other climatic zones of Eurasia. The following are less significant, but still important comments.

I reccomend to avoid self evident statements like "Researchers often use soil quality assessment to reflect the degree of soil achieving its functions" - it is well knownw for all pedologists and ecologists. 

Its not clear from text how soil quality related to soil fertiliet, need to be clarified.

Next sentence is confusing - "Like climate change, fire can have important impacts on natural ecosystems" - climate change is long term, while fires are short, in this case we cant use the word "like".

Are you shout that latin name of "Pinus Yunnanensis" here is writtem correct , I mean species name in capital letter?

While you describing severity of fires why dont you use terms "surface fire" and "ridding fire"?

At the end of the "Introduction" chapter I reccomen to formulate scientific working hypothesis and limitation of the research. 

MandMs chapter

"The main soil type is mountain yellow-brown soil, which is sandy" - I require to provide soil naming with WRB-2015-2022 or USDA and to provide soil section picture and description of horizontal secqunce and soil parent material type. 

Here I ask you to provide the reference "Soil organic matter (SOM) was determined by dichromate oxidation" cause at least 5 methods of dicromation methods exists for soil carbon.

SOM - was it soil organic matter itself or soil organic carbon? if first , how this data was reached?

PORosity - % to what - to fine earth or to bulk soil sample?

References - I am confused by total dominnance of chienesse sources of citation. I reccomend to cite more current works from Russia (Maximova et al, Dymov et al.), Lituania and Portugal (e.g. Pereira et al) and namy others. 

Discussion  -  I reccoment to focus on pedology and genetic soil science - I mean to desribe soil forming processes, but not only "increasing-decresing" research design.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Assessment of high-severity post-fire soil quality and its recovery in dry-warm valley forestlands in southwest China through selecting the minimum data set and soil quality index

 

Abstract: The abstract is descriptive, better results must be presented. Treatments (controls?) must be better described, and a valid conclusion must be included.

Methods: Introduction is fine; however, the research questions are poorly presented. We need a better general objective, and some specific questions to solve during this research. These specific questions must be scientifically sound (not descriptive). Add some hypothesis or questions. And in this context, introduction must be complete, e.g. you must better present the state-of-art and the science gap you want to fill. Treatments are the key, and these “treatments” must be related to the introduction content (e.g. fire severity, fire occurrence, topography, vegetation communities, etc).

There is a big issue related to landscape control. You only analyse one place, one event, and there are no replications in the landscape. So, all the experiment is based on “auto-replications”. You need to better describe the research experiment background and design. It is clear the effect of time (6 months, 1 to 3 years after events), but not the others comparisons in the landscape. You also consider a control unburned site, however is not clearly described. Which kind of control? With or without uses or past impacts that can influence over the same variables that you measured.

Remove formulae in methods (just a reference is enough), only left those formulae that are new for science.

According to the comments, the statistical analyses are not clear (treatments and replicas, including the control in the landscape).

Results: Most of the results are not well connected to the objectives. You need to establish a better history across the paper. Most of the results are descriptive and there is a lack of connection with the study design that I mentioned before. In example, you can correlate anything with anything, but these analyses must answer one specific question. Improve these sections.

Discussion must be revised in the new version of the draft.

Conclusions: These are not valid conclusions. These are a summary of results. A conclusion is a couple of sentences with the new knowledge that you made, and these must be closely related to your results. They are not descriptive. Please, improve this section.

Quality of the presentation: There are a lot of mistake in style, captions, and details (e.g. references). Please, check carefully the author instructions before sending a new version of the MS.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor check must be considered before final acceptance of the draft.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Almost all my suggestions are taken into account.

Only one point still not managed: I reccomend to provide soil naming according to any soil taxonomy database exists. Also I reccomend to give naming of soil parent materials.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Abstract: Objective is not clear. You must include one scientific objective here, not one like a method. There are no statistics here, the treatmetns and experimental design are not clear. No conclusions here, you must add one. The abstract must be re-written again.

Introduction, still presenting the same weakness described before. Revise again, please, add one general objective, a clear scientific objective. The control and the experimental design must be clear in the description of the introduction... not only general issues.

Formulae must be removed. You copy and paste these formulae from other papers, please, just leave the references. This is not a student book chapter, this is a scientific paper.

There are a LOT of discussion in the results, these sentences and paragraph must be removed. Here is a descriptive section.

Figure 5 must be improved in quality. Remove the mean value reference. Remove the outer lines. Use only one digit in axis y. Increase the font size. Use acronynms for axis X, and explain in figure caption. Use colors to differenciate the treatments boxes.

The same for Figure 6. Increase the size of lines and dots. Add to the models the errors (MAE, SEE).

Table 5 can be moved to Annex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf