When Ice Turns to Water: Forest Fires and Indigenous Settlements in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

thank you for an interesting reading, I have a number of comments. The paper is highly interesting and relevant, but I think it will have to be fundamentally reorganized in order to convey its message properly. You need to tell us from the beginning: What is the most important thing you found out, what does this contribute to literature?

• You need a "results" section! The results cannot be presented in a discussion section. This makes the paper extra hard to read.Ln 128 should be beginning of results section.
• Your ethnographic data is really good but presentation is lacking.
• You clearly lack a theoretical framework to approach your subject. What are your main analytical concepts? How do you frame your research question in terms of this concept? How do you define traditional ecological knowledge and why is it important for your argument?
• Please engage with the literature on fire ecologies and fire in traditional societies, e.g. Kull 2004. Also engage much more with literature on indigenous and traditional knowledge.
• The methods section can be improved. You reflect your own positionality, which is great, but you should provide more information on how you gathered data, were you have sampled respondents and from what logic, etc.
• Please provide a map with Latin names of the Republic
• The natural science arguments on climate change in the section "Origin of Forest fire: versions and facts." could be presented much more concise, after all this is a social science paper.
• Please leave out expressions like "it is not surprising", "understandible" or "in our opinion" .. this kind of value judgement appears to be inappropriate.
• The article is much too long and descriptive, and while I appreciate the details, sometimes this just reads like a chronicle of the summer 2021 fires. But your job as scientists is to provide analysis and not solely data representation.
• The conclusion is not convincing. Please do not present new data and arguments in a conclusion section. Rewrite to better communicate your core arguments.

Please see my extensive comments in attached corrections.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to the Reviewer #1.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your detailed review. It was very constructive and helpful.

We added the “Results’ section as you suggested from Line 128.

We also added our theoretical framework – the Indigenous framework. It is comparatively new and is very relevant to our article.

We also defined Traditional Ecological Knowledge as a deep knowledge of specific plant phenological phases and a detailed understanding of climate-environment-people interconnected relations.

We added more sources on fire ecology, Indigenous and traditional knowledge of fire management. Thank you.

We provided more information in our “Material and methods” section

A map with the Latin name of the Republic is provided.

We shortened our article and deleted unnecessary words such as “surprisingly," “in our opinion,” etc. thank you.

We added our core arguments in Conclusion.

Please see the answers to your extensive comments below.

Thank you again for your helpful review,

Sincerely,

Liliya, Vera, and Viktoria

Line 32 explanation of the word “uluses” = districts

Explained, thank you.

Line 42

Changed, thank you.

Line49. Do not capitalize the word “Indigenous.”

We capitalized the word Indigenous as a sign of respect the same way that words English, Spanish and others are capitalized. You can read an explanation of capitalizing of this word here:

https://www.sapiens.org/language/capitalize-indigenous/

Line 50: You don’t need so many references for this statement, 2-3 are sufficient

We have reduced to 3, thank you.

Line 56. Square

Changed, thank you

Line 88: Page number missing (Somoghotto)

Added

Line 103

Reference added

Line 108

We spent a few years in a field research from 2010-2021 in four uluses (disricts) and the city of Yakutsk. A total of 594 Indigenous peoples participated in interviews and focus group discussions.

Line 114

Smoke

Line 129

Started, thank you.

Line 158

Changed to “the head of the republic”

Line 209

The map inserted

Line 251 (Figure 5)

1. Y-axis - change of cloudiness
2. Y-axis – change of the total area of the forest fires

Line285

Added: WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, VKontacte, and other.

Line 334

Deleted

Line 368

Graphs inserted, thank you.

Line 391

We moved the text to the Conclusion

Line 400

changed

Line 442

Changed, thank you.

Line 456

Deleted, thank you.

Line 460

Added references to TEK; thank you

Line 473

Deleted

Line 490

Deleted

Line 607

Deleted

Line 613

Deleted

Line 702-704

Deleted

Line 740-744

Deleted

Line 814

Can we keep it, please? It helps to visualize the problem.

Line 821

It is a synonym of the word “perception.”

Line 847-850

Deleted, thank you

Line 873-874

Deleted, thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the paper is very interesting and important, but the manuscript does not have a scientific form in the true sense of the word. First of all, the manuscript is very long and it should definitely be significantly shortened. On the other hand, important information is missing, especially in the chapter Materials and methods. The information in this chapter is too general, and data on the sample, number of respondents, structure of respondents, questionnaires and the most important questions asked during the research are missing. The next chapter, the Discussion, is unacceptably long, with a lot of non-scientific information. At the same time, it would be logical for the title of the chapter to be "Results and discussion". Parts of the manuscript that show the timeline of events in the field during the forest fire control are too long and without scientific analysis.
The list of references contains few papers from scientific journals, and especially few references from important scientific journals. Most of the cited references are in Russian, with no English translation, making it too complicated for a large number of readers.
The good things in the manuscript, in addition to a very important topic, is certainly pointing out the problems of the Indigenous people, as well as the forest fire control in very specific conditions of this part of the Russian Federation. It is commendable that the authors point out the uneven distribution of centers for monitoring and prediction of emergency situations in Russia, as well as very small investments in the forest fire control.
I suggest the authors to reorganize the manuscript, make sure that it has all the necessary chapters and all the necessary components of scientific work (especially the basic information in the chapter materials and methods). They should also shorten the manuscript and remove too long sections with little or no scientific information. The list of references should be expanded to include papers from high-ranking journals. Therefore, the paper must have a scientific form and be without unnecessary details. The manuscript prepared this way could be considered for publication in this journal.

Author Response

Response to the Reviewer #2.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your detailed review. It was very constructive and helpful.

Following your suggestions, we have reorganized our manuscript.

Thus, we added the “Results’ section as you suggested and significantly shortened the “Discussion” section.

We deleted unnecessary details.

We also added necessary information in our “Material and methods” section.

We added more sources on Indigenous and traditional knowledge of fire management from high-ranking journals; thank you for your advice. However, there is no literature on the human dimension of the recent forest fires in Siberia (2020-2021) in high-ranking journals. It is a very new and understudied phenomenon. Our article is a pioneering study in this field.

We translated sources in the Russian language to English.

Thank you again for your helpful review,

Sincerely,

Liliya, Vera, and Viktoria

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, thank you for your efforts, I find the contribution much improved and easier to read. Congratulations on a great empirical paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you very much!:)

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors improved the manuscript significantly. However, there are still several things to improve.

I suggest that there should be one chapter "Results and Discussion" instead of "Results" and "Discussion".

The list of references is also improved by adding new references. I understand that there in not much scientific literature on the subject of the paper and I think that the list of references is well corrected.

"Figure 1" should be in brackets, before the dot. The same with all the other figures.

Row 60: Figure 1, the map, contains Cyrillic and other letters. The manuscript is in English, and all names and terms in figures should be in English. 

Row 75: There is [18] before [3-6] (row 77). All the references must be in order. The same in the reference list at the end of the manuscript.

Row 695: "procss"?

There are two Figures 6 (pages 9 and 13). The authors should check all the figures and take care of order (numbers).

My suggestion is that all the Russian references in the list of the references should have both the original Russian title and the title in English (translation). Please check all the references.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your additional suggestions.

1. I suggest that there should be one chapter "Results and Discussion" instead of "Results" and "Discussion".

Following your suggestions, we combined two sections “Results” and “Discussion” into one “Results and Discussion.”

2. The list of references is also improved by adding new references. I understand that there is not much scientific literature on the subject of the paper and I think that the list of references is well corrected.

Yes, correct. There is not much scientific literature on the human dimension of forest fires in the Sakha Republic. Thank you for understanding. And we added new relevant references.

3. "Figure 1" should be in brackets, before the dot. The same with all the other figures.

Corrected, thank you.

4. Row 60: Figure 1, the map, contains Cyrillic and other letters. The manuscript is in English, and all names and terms in figures should be in English. 

We changed the map, thank you for mentioning these important details.

5. Row 75: There is [18] before [3-6] (row 77). All the references must be in order. The same is in the reference list at the end of the manuscript.

Corrected.

6. There are two Figures 6 (pages 9 and 13). The authors should check all the figures and take care of the order (numbers).

Corrected, thank you.

7. My suggestion is that all the Russian references in the list of references should have both the original Russian title and the title in English (translation). Please check all the references.

We have translated all Russian references to English. The list of references includes both Russian titles and English translations.

Sincerely,

Vera, Liliya, Vika