Forecast Zoning of Forest Fire Occurrence: A Case Study in Southern China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors!

Your article is in the scope of Forests journal.

But at present time manuscript has some disadvantages.

Title

I think you should include term "probability" in title.

I think you should not emphasize on Sothern China region in title. I suggest to use following title: "Predicting Probability of Forest Fire Occurrence: Case Study". I think this title is more suitable for international journal.

Abstract

You should include term "probability" in combination with "occurrence".

Introduction

This section is totally unacceptable at present time. This section is conbination of Introduction and Background section. But I found only 22 references. It's to small for this wide topic. Moreover, the majority of references are Chinease works. But Forests is an international journal. You must provide wide range of cited works from South Europe, USA, Russian Fedeartion, Canada, Australia to show international context of you work within regional study. Please, extend references with international works. I estimate suitable quantity of cited works in Introduction at least about 50-60 original references. You should understand that this topic is widely studied last decades over the world.

Resources and Methods

Table 1. Why did you not to consider reasons of forest fire occurrence like lightning and human activity? I think it is obligatory for article that deal with predicting of forest fire occurrence. Please, make some explanations.

Please, briefly describe Random Forest algorithm within this section.

There are no any model for assessment of forest fire probability in this section. This ia a serious lack of this study. Please, update you methods section.

Also I suggest to introduce 5 level scale in this section to qualitative assessment of forest fire occurrence probability. For example, [0,0.2] - low forest fire danger, ... (0.8,1] - extreme forest fire danger.

Results

I did not understand "physical matter" of results depicted in Figure 3. Please, give more detailed explanation of this result.

Figure 7. Why did you use term "risk" in this Figure?

According to Risk Analysis theory probability of forest fire is a danger while risk is a probability multiplied to potential damage from forest fires. You results did not correspond to this strong mathematical theory. Please, fully update this subsection.

Moreover, I did not find any descriptions of forest fire probability o risk assessment in Methods section. Please, provide such information, At present time your Results section is poorly sounds like scientific work.

I did not find any information on retrospective analysis of predicting forest fire occurrence probability. I think you should provide comparative analysis of predicted and registered date on forest fire occurrence for some previous period of time.

Forest fire zoning is not predictive information. This is only assessment of current forest fire situation within controlled territory.

Discussion and Conclusions

You wrote about human activity in Discussion, but I did not find any information on forest fire reasons like lightning and human activity in Methods section. Please, update Methods section.

In 4th subsection you wrote that you used MODIS accompanied with meteodata, topography, vegetation to predict and identify fire prone zones. There are no any information on human activity at least.

I think this section is contradictory in context of human activity while there are no any information about lightning activity.

I think limitations shouls be extended with some speculations on human and lightning activity.

Also, you should provide information on future researches.

Also, you should provide discussion of retrospective analysis of forest fire probabilty predicted on the basis of your methodology.

Please, provide numbered set of 4-6 key findings with corresponding conclusions in conclusion subsection.

Please, make some speculation on potential usage of your methodology in international context over other territories with forest cover. Forest is an international journal.

References

Please, extend this section according suggested improvements of Introduction section. I estimate minimal number of unique references about 80-110 cited works taking into account widely studied topic of forest fire predicting over the world.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

No comments

Author Response

Dear  Reviewer,

We sincerely appreciate the insightful comments provided by both you and the reviewers. We have diligently incorporated the suggestions into our manuscript, addressing each point raised. The collaborative efforts with the reviewers have led to substantial improvements in the quality of the manuscript. We trust that, with these enhancements, the manuscript is now deemed acceptable by you and the esteemed reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I reviewed the manuscript "Predicting Forest Fire Occurrences in Southern China" by Jing et al. The topic is interesting and fits the scope of Forest. However, the current version of the manuscript is not suitable for publication. Although most parts of the manuscript are well written, there are some that are hard to follow and should be revised. So, in general, I recommend that the authors improve the English quality of the manuscript. I have provided my specific comments below.  

1- The Abstract is too long. Please make it more concise by keeping the most notable parts of the manuscript. For instance, Lines 13-19 are introductory explanations that can be mostly removed. The other parts also require summarization.

2- The Introduction section requires a thorough revision. First, no case studies were explained, and the section lacks suitable references. Second, no common methods for forest fire prediction were explored and explained, along with their limitations and advantages. Third, Nothing has been mentioned about the algorithms that were implemented in the manuscript, along with the justification of their superiority over the other existing methods. Moreover, In some parts, there is no logical connection between sentences. For instance, in Lines 88 - 91, the first sentence is about the random forest algorithm, while the second sentence is about the monthly variation of forest fires. I can not see any logical relationship. Please expand such sections for clarification.

3- It is unclear what the novelty of the manuscript is. No previous studies on the southern parts of China were given to present the place of this research among previously published research. What does this manuscript add to the field when compared with previously published papers in China or other parts of the world? This must be clearly stated in the last paragraph of the Introduction.

4- What is the spatial resolution of data sources in Table 1? How did you integrate them for further analysis?

5- Please revise the caption of Figure 2.

6- Please clearly indicate the parameters in equations 1 to 7, so the reader can better follow such equations.

7- Section 3.2; Please expand the explanations for clarity. What do various types of cities mean in Line 279? Please clearly indicate the meaning of L-L with an instance for clarification.

8- In Line 301; The authors mentioned that forest fires between 2001 and 2019 were analyzed. However, Figure 5 and Table 2 include only the information for four years. Please add similar information for all the studied years and then investigate the movement of ellipse centers. This will make the explanations and results more robust and acceptable.

9- Figure 7; The results only include monthly forest fire zoning; however, to make the Result section more exhaustive, I recommend that the authors include the spatio-temporal comparison of each during the study period (i.e., 2001 and 2019). This can help to better understand the spatio-temporal characteristics of fire zoning in each month individually.

10- Since various type of input data were used in the random forest model, please clearly indicate the inputs and output of the random forest algorithm for forest fire zoning. More importantly, please provide the feature importance of the random forest model with supporting explanations.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English quality is generally good enough to understand most parts of the manuscript. However, the manuscript should be re-checked to improve its English quality for better readability, and the existing typos (throughout the manuscript) should be correct.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely appreciate the insightful comments provided by both you and the reviewers. We have diligently incorporated the suggestions into our manuscript, addressing each point raised. The collaborative efforts with the reviewers have led to substantial improvements in the quality of the manuscript. We trust that, with these enhancements, the manuscript is now deemed acceptable by you and the esteemed reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Scientific papers should be written in a formal manner, using impersonal expressions like: "It has been used" instead of " we utilized", "have been collected", "It has been established" .... "it has been used" - row 105, "we conducted" -row 408, etc.  Replace "our study" with "this study" - row 417, row 455.

The subsection 2.1 title should be starting with a capital.

Include space between "China [22]" -row 121, "follows [33]" - row 207, "problems [34]" - row 223, " more diverse [35,36] - row 229, "problems [38] - row 238 and so on.

- switch "t" to normal instead of italic in "the global" -row 278

- Section 2.3.2 name: Standard Deviation Ellipse or The ellipsoid of the standard deviation, but the later doesn't sound like a proper English.

I suggest to replace "garnered" with "gained". The former has more the meaning of physically harvest and gather the harvest. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

See the previous comment regarding the impersonal English form.

Other recommended corrections:

- include the article: " of the fire incidents" - row 91, "through the sattelite" -row 133, on the fire spread" - row 141, "to assist the decision-makers" -row 161, "Through the spatial" -row 168, "in the global" - row 177, assessing the model" - row 254, "helps the fire suppression" or "helps supressing" - row 273, " contributing to an informed" - row 325, "into the real-world" -row 337, "influence the fire occurrence" - row 383.

"Our study considers multiple key factors" - Beside the fore mentioned impersonal form, this is not the best formulation because the study doesn't consider anything. There are the authors who consider this and that throughout this study.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely appreciate the insightful comments provided by both you and the reviewers. We have diligently incorporated the suggestions into our manuscript, addressing each point raised. The collaborative efforts with the reviewers have led to substantial improvements in the quality of the manuscript. We trust that, with these enhancements, the manuscript is now deemed acceptable by you and the esteemed reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors!

Thank you for your revision.

I accepted the majority of your explanations and improvements.

But I wish to emphasize that terminology in your article is non acceptable at current time.

You defined probability of forest fires occurrence using historical and some other objective data. Let it be acceptable.

But you wrote in comments that you did not provide predictive information within this article. There is only assessment of forest fire occurrence. And you suggest to use right terminology in the next studies. Sorry, but it is not acceptable. You should not mislead readers in your results using errorous terminology. This is research article and you should provide only true information. Sorry for my comparison, but this is a science, but not poetry. Please, fully check your article and use only "assessment" instead of "prediction". It is obligatory to correspond to public ethic.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

No comments

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your corrections. I realize that I overlooked this part. I have made the necessary changes as per your valuable suggestions to ensure the accuracy and coherence of the paper. Regarding the third point you mentioned, I sincerely apologize; it may have resulted from my unclear expression. To eliminate this misunderstanding and ensure accurate communication of information, I have restructured and refined that section. the paper extensively utilizes historical data and other objective data to forecast zoning the probability of forest fire occurrence. Once again, I appreciate your professional guidance and valuable advice. I have made the corresponding modifications and improvements. I look forward to further feedback and guidance from you. The title has also been changed to "Forecast Zoning of Forest Fire Occurrence: A Case Study in Southern China.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I appreciate the authors' efforts in addressing all the comments, by which the manuscript has improved. The current version is suitable for publication, and I only have a minor comment regarding the revised title of the manuscript. I recommend authors to change "Case Study" to "A Case Study in Southern China".

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your meticulous review of our manuscript and your valuable insights. We express deep gratitude for the suggestions you have provided and recognize that such modifications will make our title more accurate and descriptive. Following your advice, we have revised the title by replacing "Case Study" with "A Case Study in Southern China."
Once again, we appreciate your professional guidance and suggestions, as well as your recognition of our work.