Land Surface Temperature May Have a Greater Impact than Air Temperature on the Autumn Phenology in the Tibetan Plateau

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting paper and is definitely relevant to the Earth science and climate change community. Here are some comments:

1. I recommend using agricultural surveys and statistics to explain SOS and EOS. I understand the definition in this paper is based on NDVI value, but whenever we talk about crop phenology, we want to use definitions used by the agricultural community. For example, "In Tibet, alpine generally grows for X months with Y SOS and Z EOS". I suggest trying to show some pictures if possible - how a field looks at SOS and EOS. However, I understand if that is difficult to acquire. 

2. I think you should show NDVI time series from start of year to end of year (probably for a few years). You can label this time series with SOS and EOS. It will be a nice representation for the reader. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of the article “Land Surface Temperature May Have a Greater Impact than Air Temperature on the Autumn Phenology in the Tibetan Plateau”.

Generally, I ignore editing errors, for example in line 97 there should be a space between the value 4,000 and the unit meter (4,000 m).

Introduction

There is a lack of broader literature on the relationship between vegetation and climatic conditions, and in particular between the use of NDVI to assess habitat conditions and their impact on vegetation.

Methods

Line 127 – the area should be expressed in km²

Figure 1 – The description of the figure lacks the source of data on the basis of which the height differences and boundaries of plant formations were plotted (Science Data Bank?).

There is no data source describing in more detail the dynamic threshold method used in this paper (line 161 and next)

There is no data source describing in more detail the Theil-Sen's trend method used in this paper (line 176 and next).

There is a lack of reference data on real phenology based on vegetation changes from ground observations in various types of vegetation and comparison of these data with the NDVI-based method, which would verify the correctness of used the method.

Results

Figure 2. There is no explanation why the deciduous forests marked in Figure 1 were completely omitted from the results (Figure 2a), and do the "forests" shown in Figure 2b mean only coniferous forests? Especially that for deciduous forests NDVI would be especially useful. Is it due to the lack of meteorological stations in the region of deciduous forests? And if so, why there is no meteorological station in this region?

Ground moisture was not tested, it could be more important than LST.

There was no analysis of the relationship between the length of the growing season and the altitude and relief of the land.

References not Preferences

Generally, I prefer citing names in the text instead of the numerical form used in MDPI, but the numerical method is obligatory (unless MDPI has changed the rules)

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript requires minor corrections (e.g. References, not Preferences)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a very informative and interesting article, especially for me, since I am engaged in similar research. Indeed, in phenology, considerable attention is paid to spring phenological events and their relationship to climatic parameters, primarily air temperature and precipitation. Autumn phenological events manifest themselves less clearly, they are stretched over time, they are influenced by many factors, of which the air temperature is not as important as in spring, so it is more difficult to work with them. It is important to discover a significant influence on the autumn phenomena of the state of the soil cover in comparison with the traditional climatic parameters of the state of the atmosphere. A detailed and meaningful interpretation of the results obtained should be noted in the "discussion" section. In general, I note a very high scientific level of research based on the analysis of a large amount of empirical data on a very complex region. The research methodology is clearly stated and can be used in similar studies. The impression of the article is the most positive. There are no significant comments on the work. The only thing is that you should not duplicate the words from the title of the article in the "keywords" block.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf