Spatial and Temporal Variation in Alpine Vegetation Phenology and Its Response to Climatic and Topographic Factors on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I have reviewed the paper entitled “Spatial and Temporal Variation of Alpine Vegetation Phenology and Its Response to Climatic and Topographic Factors on 3 the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau 4”, which presents a regional-scale approach, reporting the spatial-temporal variation of the phenological metrics of the start of season and end of the season for the QTP, inter-annual variations to detect shifts in the phenological trends and the relationship phenology of QTP has with climatic factors as temperature and precipitation. There are analyses related to the vegetation types of the QTP separately as well, such as phenological trends, and relationship with altitudinal gradients. The paper brings a lot of valuable information, which may improve the understanding of the phenological patterns found for the QTP region, their main drivers, and the implications of climate shift.
However, there are too many developments in the analysis that are not well reported in the text. In general, the developments and nuances from the phenological analysis are confusing to follow. For instance, the main goals of the work do not follow the sequence of results presented, which is confusing to the reader. There is a sequence of important results that we do not expect since are not well described in the paper goals. The author's goals are confusing to follow, and I would suggest describing better what are the main objectives reported in the work. It could be in the format of questions or hypotheses or simply numbering the goals that the work proposes. Paragraphs (69-78) should be rewritten.
Although I’m not a native speaker of English, I could notice a lot of grammatical and vocabulary errors, besides writing issues. I believe that the text needs a full review of the text to be suitable for publication.
So, my main and major concerns are (i) the writing improvement, which would clarify the authors’ paper, and (ii) the definition of the main goals of the work, that are aligned with the results reported and the discussion addressed.
So, I would not consider this paper, as it is, suitable for publication in this journal.
I have major and minor comments to address, that may corroborate with my decision, as follows:
Lines 33-34 – it should be adding a reference for the sentence
Line 48 – at home and abroad (home, where?) – it should be rewrite
Line 55 – as compared
Line 62-63 – the text is confusing, it should be rewritten
Line 64-67 – text is confusing, rewrite
Line 70-71 – the analysis should be reported in the methods, simplify for the goals paragraph.
Line 70-78 – the goals are not clear. I’d recommend pointing out each one of the main goals and following this order while reporting the results.
Line 99-103 – the text is confusing, rewrite
Line 104-107 – justify the work should be in the appropriate section not in the methods
Line 134-137 – authors said two key methods, but they present three reference methods in the sequence – rewrite. Also, the phenological metrics are not described in the methods. The abbreviations SOG and EOG refer to what phenological metric? How were they calculated? Equations 1 and 2 do not refer to the phenological metrics.
Line 144 – equation 2 should be correct
Line 275-279 – rewrite – EOG is mentioned twice, or it would be SOG and then EOG? If so, other sentences along the results should be reviewed to correct this same type of error
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1. P1, L14, MOD13Q1 remote sensing image data should be revised as MOD13Q1 product.
2. P1, author should add some ecological significance of alpine vegetation in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
3. P2, Figure 1, Climate sites should be revised as meteorological stations
4. P3，L122, the description of interpolation of thin disk samples is wrong, it should be Thin Plate Spline
5. P4, 2.3.1 phenological information extraction should be revised as phenological metrics
6. P4，L147，the i and j should be subscript index in the Ci,Yj
7. P6, L224 “with over-significance” is not suitable for English reader, it is typical Chinese English. the English language problem of this paper is serious, and it must be improved or polished significantly, or it cannot be published.
8. P8，L271, L275, L279，Figure6 should be revised as the Figure5
9. There is no detailed explanation about dynamic threshold methods used in this paper in the section 2.3.1
10. The detailed M-K method is also not introduced in the section 2.3.2, and there is no cited literature for this method.
11. The spatio-temporal change patterns of SOG and EOG in different vegetation types should be compared, and the dominant influencing factor of SOG and EOG in different vegetation types should be also compared further. The meaningful conclusions derived from these comparisons should be highlighted in the section of abstract and conclusion.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Very good job.
Its only disadvantage is some grammatical mistakes and the language should be given in a native English.
The plagiarism is 15%.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript has been improved significantly. I suggest that this paper can be accepted for publication.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
