Influence of Picea Abies Logs on the Distribution of Vascular Plants in Old-Growth Spruce Forests
, Ivan V. Romashkin, Anna Yu. Nukolova, Elena V. Fomina and Alexandr M. Kryshen
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear,
After reading the article titled "INFLUENCE OF PICEA ABIES LOGS ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF VASCULAR PLANTS IN OLD-GROWTH SPRUCE FORESTS", I have the following comments:
1- The introduction is barely 1 page long. There was no time, space or material to justify the research, adequately show what the problem is, who has already studied it and what kind of new information the paper brings. To improve the article, I suggest redoing the entire introduction, with citations from articles that show the problem, its severity, who is currently talking about it, what the working hypothesis is and how it is intended to be proven.
2- Some forms of writing are quite inappropriate, like "a structure occurring on living or... dead trees..."
3- I, who am not Russian, have great difficulty knowing where Republic of Karelia, Russia is unless I leave the article to look for a map. It is necessary to add in material and methods, a georeferenced figure of the study site, with its clear location within Russia.
4- Figure 2. says "Results of cluster analysis", but still within the methodology. It is confusing whether it is methodological data or research results.
5- There are a very high number of tables, which are so large that they span 1 page, making reading heavy and difficult. Tables should summarize information. I recommend another strategy to show this data, such as in figures..
6- Considering the results section, I am not sure that the 3 figures in the article bring novelty or significant results at the level of this journal. The results section and discussion need to be improved. What novelty/innovation did the research bring?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your careful reading of the manuscript and your valuable comments, which allowed us to take a new look at the manuscript and make changes. In the following, we have tried to show what changes we have made in accordance with your comments. All additions and changes are highlighted in blue in the text.
Reviewer: 1- The introduction is barely 1 page long. There was no time, space or material to justify the research, adequately show what the problem is, who has already studied it and what kind of new information the paper brings. To improve the article, I suggest redoing the entire introduction, with citations from articles that show the problem, its severity, who is currently talking about it, what the working hypothesis is and how it is intended to be proven.
We have rewritten the introduction, giving more attention to the review of studies on the impact of dead trees on the environment, on biodiversity. We tried to show that no research has been conducted in the form presented here. We have formulated the hypothesis and objectives of the study. We think that now the manuscript looks much more presentable.
Reviewer: 2- Some forms of writing are quite inappropriate, like "a structure occurring on living or... dead trees..."
In the new submitted version, we have tried to eliminate incorrect phrases.
Reviewer: I, who am not Russian, have great difficulty knowing where Republic of Karelia, Russia is unless I leave the article to look for a map. It is necessary to add in material and methods, a georeferenced figure of the study site, with its clear location within Russia.
We have included Figure 1 to indicate the position of the study area in the biogeographic zoning system of Europe and added a brief description of the study area.
Reviewer: 4- Figure 2. says "Results of cluster analysis", but still within the methodology. It is confusing whether it is methodological data or research results.
Figure 2 shows the results of the cluster analysis - these are clearly the results of the present study. As part of this study, we investigated the vegetation at 24 sample sites. The location of the sites in relation to each other can now be seen in Figure 1. The results of the cluster analysis are described in detail in the methodological part of the paper, as they serve to justify the division of the sample sites into groups and their further analysis within these groups. This approach allowed a more accurate and methodologically sound interpretation of the research results. We thought it would be more appropriate to place this information in the section "Objects and methods".
Reviewer: 5- There are a very high number of tables, which are so large that they span 1 page, making reading heavy and difficult. Tables should summarize information. I recommend another strategy to show this data, such as in figures..
We agree that tables visually "overload" the article and complicate the perception of the material. The largest table 1, which contains a description of the trial sites, we put it in the appendix (supplementary). Tables 2, 3 are small and characterize the selected clusters in a very brief form. Tables 4 and 5 contain the main information discussed in the results. Since the journal is electronic and has no limits on the length of the article, and the tables are presented in a minimized form when reading the article, we considered it possible to keep them in the main part of the article without putting them in the appendix. Unfortunately, the material presented in them cannot be transformed into a graphical form.
Reviewer: 6- Considering the results section, I am not sure that the 3 figures in the article bring novelty or significant results at the level of this journal. The results section and discussion need to be improved. What novelty/innovation did the research bring?
In the figures presented in the "results" section, we have tried to visualize the results of the research and at the same time show their statistical significance. To emphasize the novelty of the research and the significance of the results obtained for understanding the mechanisms of sustainability and dynamics of natural spruce forests, we have extended the discussion.
Overall, your comments have enabled us to structure the manuscript more intelligently and make the materials more accessible to the reader. Thank you!
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDead wood in forest ecosystems is an important component in biological cycle of elements, biodiversity, forest regeneration, C sequestration and some other aspects. This article is a good experimental work on fallen trees as microsites of ground vegetation and it shall be published in MDPI Forests. There are some serious things that shall be corrected by the authors.
Comments
L 10 „environmental heterogeneity“: “edaphic or soil heterogeneity” is better. Please correct.
L 13 “downed log” I know that “fallen” log (trunk/stem) are more wide used. Also “tree fall, dead wood”
L 27 “ground cover” - forest floor (Brit)/forest litter (US) is better in this context
L 47 “microhabitat” - microsite is approved term in forest ecology and forest science
L 51 – 52 Add please eco-geographical region
L 68. NB Materials and Methods. Dear authors, you missed section “Experimental sites description” (materials). Add please shortly description of climate, landscape, and in more detail forest vegetation and soil with special reference to forest floor, humus form and wood xylolytic substrate. Table 3 shows: there are 2 site classes at your SPs. Soil and log morphological description or scheme with thickness of forest floor on soil and log should be important here for both forest sites.
L 81. Please add shortly meanings of decay classes in Table 1.
L 82 Table 1, column “Stand…” Please translate into English dimensions of WOOD stock that are written in Russian. Check please other tables for presence of Russian words
L 113 legend to fig 2 Please add short claster description or refer to Table 2
L 147 ….are absent…?
L 147-154 It has to be edited: the intervals of coverage (minimal - maximal) are more correct than “above value…”
L 136 Table 3. I think that operate only with C and N in mineral topsoil is not satisfactory: you study an organic system. The values of C and N of forest floor on soil and on log should be good here. As I know logs, “xylolitic substrates” are always covered by forest floor and it is a more biologically active part of this organic matter system.
L 186 “The soil of the P and the HM microsite types contained a high level of nutrient elements” Address please here to Site description in M&M and Table 3.
L 229 Please define here “pcs” in (pcs/0.036 m2)
L 228 “ 3.2. The impact P. abies….” Here, above and below, there are sentences in titles and in the text without grammar preposition „of“ where it must be. Is it a new style or mistake?
L 223 Table 5. “Cover homogeneity values” are not defined in M&M.
L 328 “3.3. The change heterogeneity parameters of vascular plant cover increasing the P. abies downed log decay class” The title is unclear, please, edit this text. I think decay class determines heterogeneity but here it looks opposite.
L 360 Fig 5. The same comment as above. This figure is overloaded, please try to simplify it
L 421 4. Discussion Please add a comparison of your results with previous researches and also accentuate the novelty of your research with some words on practical outputs.
I can say that the manuscript can be evaluated between minor and major revision
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your careful reading of the manuscript and your valuable comments, which allowed us to take a new look at the manuscript and make changes. In the following, we have tried to show what changes we have made in accordance with your comments. All additions and changes are highlighted in blue in the text.
Reviewer: L 10 „environmental heterogeneity“: “edaphic or soil heterogeneity” is better. Please correct.
L 13 “downed log” I know that “fallen” log (trunk/stem) are more wide used. Also “tree fall, dead wood”
L 27 “ground cover” - forest floor (Brit)/forest litter (US) is better in this context
L 47 “microhabitat” - microsite is approved term in forest ecology and forest science
All of these comments have been taken into account and corrected throughout the text
Reviewer: L 51 – 52 Add please eco-geographical region
L 68. NB Materials and Methods. Dear authors, you missed section “Experimental sites description” (materials). Add please shortly description of climate, landscape, and in more detail forest vegetation and soil with special reference to forest floor, humus form and wood xylolytic substrate. Table 3 shows: there are 2 site classes at your SPs. Soil and log morphological description or scheme with thickness of forest floor on soil and log should be important here for both forest sites.
We have added to the text the characteristic of the study region, in addition, we have added Figure 1, where we have indicated the position of the study area in the biogeographic zoning system of Europe, and in Table 1 - two columns - Soil and Forest floor thickness for each SPs.
Reviewer: L 81. Please add shortly meanings of decay classes in Table 1.
We've added a table «The description of decay class system of coarse woody debris according to the classification by Shorohova and Shorohov (2001) with additions (Shorohova, Kapitsa, 2014)».
Reviewer: L82 Table 1, column “Stand…” Please translate into English dimensions of WOOD stock that are written in Russian. Check please other tables for presence of Russian words
Сorrected throughout the text
Reviewer: L 113 legend to fig 2 Please add short claster description or refer to Table 2
Added to the title of the Figure 2: «Cluster structure and description represented on the Table 2»
Reviewer: L 147 ….are absent…?
Corrected
L 147-154 It has to be edited: the intervals of coverage (minimal - maximal) are more correct than “above value…”
Thank you, we've clarified the value ranges.
L 136 Table 3. I think that operate only with C and N in mineral topsoil is not satisfactory: you study an organic system. The values of C and N of forest floor on soil and on log should be good here. As I know logs, “xylolitic substrates” are always covered by forest floor and it is a more biologically active part of this organic matter system.
All decaying logs presented in the work were covered with moss, there was a little fall on the logs of 3-4-th decay classes, the soil outside the logs was covered with litter. The logs at the decay class 5b were under litter. We added a column with soil type and forest floor thickness for each sample site to Table 1. A total of 5 soil types were observed across the 24 sample sites, with varying thicknesses of horizons and forest litter. We agree that the nutrient content only in the mineral subsoil cannot give a complete picture of the organic system. However, at the time of the study we had only such data, so we used the Ellenberg ecological scale. The values presented in Table 3 are averages for each cluster. For each survey site (0.036 cm2), an average score for nutrient content, moisture, acidity and light was calculated from the composition and density of vascular plants.
Reviewer: L 186 “The soil of the P and the HM microsite types contained a high level of nutrient elements”
Address please here to Site description in M&M and Table 3.
Reviewer: L 229 Please define here “pcs” in (pcs/0.036 m2)
Corrected
Reviewer: L 228 “ 3.2. The impact P. abies….” Here, above and below, there are sentences in titles and in the text without grammar preposition „of“ where it must be. Is it a new style or mistake?
These were mistakes, сorrected it
L 223 Table 5. “Cover homogeneity values” are not defined in M&M.
The value of cover homogeneity was calculated using the formula presented in the article (Genikova and Kryshen, 2018). The value of homogeneity of vascular plant cover is the difference between the maximum (one) and the average normalized Euclidean distance between remoteness plots (deadwood trunk, 0-20, 20-55, 55-100 cm) of the sample site calculated by participation rates. Added to Materials and Methods.
Reviewer: L 328 “3.3. The change heterogeneity parameters of vascular plant cover increasing the P. abies downed log decay class” The title is unclear, please, edit this text. I think decay class determines heterogeneity but here it looks opposite.
Сorrected on: Increasing the log decay class reduces heterogeneity of vascular plant cover
Reviewer: L 360 Fig 5. The same comment as above. This figure is overloaded, please try to simplify it
Сorrected on: Increasing the log decay class change heterogeneity vascular plant cover on xylolytic substrate (XS) and the areas distance from log (ADL).
Reviewer: L 421 4. Discussion Please add a comparison of your results with previous researches and also accentuate the novelty of your research with some words on practical outputs.
We have rewritten the introduction, giving more attention to the review of studies on the impact of dead trees on the environment, on biodiversity. We tried to show that no research has been conducted in the form presented here. We have formulated the hypothesis and objectives of the study. We think that now the manuscript looks much more presentable.
Overall, your comments have enabled us to structure the manuscript and make the materials more accessible to the reader. Thank you!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The publication was correctly written and interestring. My comments can be seen below. .
· The results were presented regarding to the clusters (P, M, OM, HM microsites). Are the data presented in the study (e.g. in Figure 3) are the mean values of the sample plots data?
For example P microsite has 7 sample plots and in each sample plot ha 6 data in a given distance. Is one data in the figure is calculated as a mean of 7*6 data? Please mention it in the material and method section. If you calculated the data in this way the errors at HM site should be larger than at the other sites as it has just 2 sample plots.
· Line 189-190. At the M microsite the great C/N ratio can be the cause of the reduced N availability.
· In the discussion part, a very general statement is written with relatively lot citations. (line 423-425). It would be better if the cited references were more specificly explain the results and the results would be compared to the results of other researchers.
· line 423 , the citation should be a number in stead of Safonov et al.
·
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageCheck the English language again:
Line 194. The impact of P. abies instead of The impact P. abies.
Line 219-220, line 224-225. of some vascular species at different distances instead of : some vascular species different distance
line 440. Delete the word : with
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your careful reading of the manuscript and your valuable comments, which allowed us to take a new look at the manuscript and make changes. In the following, we have tried to show what changes we have made in accordance with your comments. All additions and changes are highlighted in blue in the text.
Reviewer: The results were presented regarding to the clusters (P, M, OM, HM microsites). Are the data presented in the study (e.g. in Figure 3) are the mean values of the sample plots data? For example P microsite has 7 sample plots and in each sample plot ha 6 data in a given distance. Is one data in the figure is calculated as a mean of 7*6 data? Please mention it in the material and method section. If you calculated the data in this way the errors at HM site should be larger than at the other sites as it has just 2 sample plots.
Figures 3, 4, 5 show the average values for the cluster. The average value of the parameter of the horizontal distribution of vascular plants (occurrence, density) was calculated for each distance from log (0-10, ...90-100 cm) as 6 * the number of SPs with certain decay class (cluster content is presented in Table 2). The average value of the vascular plant cover heterogeneity parameter (average number of species, uniformity, Simpson index) was calculated for the number of counting sites (cell 0.036 m2) in the areas distance from log (0-20, 20-55 and 55-100 cm) *the number of SPs with certain decay class. Number of variants in the samples was not the same, not always large, and the distribution is often not normal. The nonparametric Kraskel-Wallis test was used for the analysis, followed by the criterion of pairwise comparison of Dunn.
Indeed, there were 2 SPs on the HM microsite type, the analyzed sample at each distance from the log was equal to 12 options. The errors of the average value were not very high, the coefficient of variation for occurrence was in the range of 30-45%, for the density - 25-40%.
Reviewer: Line 189-190. At the M microsite the great C/N ratio can be the cause of the reduced N availability.
Thank you!
Reviewer: In the discussion part, a very general statement is written with relatively lot citations. (line 423-425). It would be better if the cited references were more specificly explain the results and the results would be compared to the results of other researchers.
We have rewritten the introduction and discussion, giving more attention to the review of studies on the impact of dead trees on the environment, on biodiversity. We have formulated the hypothesis and objectives of the study. We think that now the manuscript looks much more presentable.
Reviewer: line 423 , the citation should be a number in stead of Safonov et al.
Corrected it, thank you!
Reviewer: Line 194. The impact of P. abies instead of The impact P. abies.
Сorrected throughout the text
Reviewer: Line 219-220, line 224-225. of some vascular species at different distances instead of : some vascular species different distance
Corrected it
Reviewer: line 440. Delete the word : with
Corrected it
Dear Reviewer, your comments have enabled us to structure the manuscript and make the materials more accessible to the reader. Thank you!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authorsdear,
I believe that my suggestions were accepted, considerably improving the quality of the article. Therefore, I recommend approval.
