Distance to a River Modifies Climate Legacy on Vegetation Growth in a Boreal Riparian Forest
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsComments to the Authors:
Some improvements have been made to the manuscript in accordance with the last comments. However, several issues in experimental design and English writing still need to be resolved before a publication to RS. I think that the manuscript could be further greatly revised. Comments and questions on concerns are below, which may help the authors to improve the paper.
Comment 1:
The title of the article “Climate Legacy and River Buffering Effect on Vegetation Growth in a Boreal Riparian Forest” is unclear and need to be modified. This study analyzed the legacy effects of temperature, precipitation, and snow cover on vegetation growth in boreal riparian forest and how this legacy is affected by distance from rivers. The roles of river buffering and climate are not paratactic.
Comment 2:
The definition of the river buffering is still confused in Section 2.2. Why do you categorize the range into two groups (within 1 km and 2-3 km) for analysis of climate legacy effected by distance from the rivers? What about the range of 1-2 km from the rivers? I also think this category too rough. I suggest quantifying the relationship between climate legacy and distance from rivers. For example, how many years the climate legacy changes with a 1-km increase of distance from the river.
Comment 3:
How to consider the impact of the distance from a point to two (or more) adjacent rivers on its climate legacy?
Comment 4:
The flowchart (Figure 2) is not detailed and aesthetic enough. Please improve it.
Comment 5:
Most of the length units in this paper are "km" and "m". To maintain the unity of writing, change the word “meters” into “m” in Lines 112, 123, 139, and 258.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguagePlease check the full text carefully and improve your English writing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript deals with an important topic studying the impact of snow cover on vegetation growth. Some modifications are needed before publication.
Abstract:
Do not use words used in the text as keywords
English
Check some refuses along the text (e.g.: figure 2 LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION)
Methodology used and results obtained are well described, findings will be capitalised from the research community. What is missing is the link between the results obtained and future perspectives. I suggest the authors to dedicate more effort to describe what will be the effect of snow cover reduction on vegetation growth and what would be used for vegetation model development (i.e.: river proximity). These aspect could be also described as bullet point, to enhance the robustness of the results.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
English
Check some refuses along the text (e.g.: figure 2 LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION)
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI would like to indicate that the first version I received for reviewing was a draft. This reviewer did not like to assess a draft paper (as this is the work of the senior coauthors).
Once this was overpassed, the paper looks nice and the contents are interesting, even limited to a very specific region.
I suggest to improve the definition of equation (2), as it is not indicated what is the meaning of each term in this equation.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe overall quality of the article is high. But we can consider writing more specifically in the conclusion. At the same time, the writing method of research background needs to be improved.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis article has been reasonably revised, and the authors have resolved my previous concerns. Please check the format of the content in the paper carefully before publishing.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguagePlease check the English writing carefully.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Author,
You've done a very interesting study and you've got important results. The only thing I wanted to discuss is how you write in the abstract and in the text about the factors that affect the growth of vegetation. You write, for example,
Line 21-22: Results showed that temperature, precipitation and snow cover duration increased vegetation growth.
Lines 238-239: Indeed, the results of this study showed that current and antecedent growing season temperature (from April to September) increased vegetation growth
The idea is not formulated quite correctly, since we are talking not just about parameters, but about changing them. That is, it is better to write something like: "Increase in temperature (not temperature, but increase in temperature) and precipitation and Increase in snow cover duration increases the growth of vegetation."
In my understanding, the same idea is more correctly stated in the first two lines of the Conclusion section:
Lines 304-305: This study showed that higher temperature and precipitation and longer snow cover duration increased vegetation growth and that these climate legacies lasted for 1-5 years
Another thing that I think is worth considering. You do not take into account winter temperatures, although you emphasize that winter temperatures are very low in the study area. The combination of low temperatures and the proximity of groundwater (proximity to a river) can lead to freezing of the roots of some plants during particularly severe winters. From this point of view, proximity to the river may play a negative role in the development of plants after severe winters with little snow.
In general, this is a good study and I can recommend it for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPoint 1: Introduction, Page 1 Line 39-45. This paper aims at studying the effect of snow cover Legacy on vegetation growth, rather than the effect of temperature and precipitation on vegetation growth. Please overview the relevant literatures. I don’t think the relevant researches are lacking.
Point2: Introduction, Page 2 Line 72-79. This paper involves two research contents: 1) the magnitude and duration of snow cover legacy on vegetation growth across different vegetation types, 2) if and how distance to a river modifies the magnitude and time course of climate memories. They are very different topics. Why are they studied together? It feels like a deliberate patchwork.
Point3: Results are too simple. It doesn't seem to have much geographical significance. I don’t think SAM is better than random forest.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIt’s an interesting study to investigate the climate and snow cover legacy of vegetation growth. The experimental design of the paper is reasonable, and the analysis of the results is relatively complete. However, several issues still need to be resolved before a publication to RS. There is a lot of common-sense acknowledgment that needs to be streamlined, especially in Introduction and Materials and methods. I think that the manuscript could be greatly revised. Comments and questions on concerns are below, which may help the authors to improve the paper.
Comment 1:
Introduction: it is mentioned several times that climate and snow cover have an impact on vegetation productivity, but why not follow up with studies using vegetation productivity indicators such as Net Primary Productivity (NPP) rather than NDVI? Besides, the study highlights the snow cover legacy of vegetation growth, but NDVI itself can be seriously disturbed by snow cover, resulting in a lower or negative NDVI value in the vegetation area covered by snow. Did you address this issue in your research? Or I believe the NDVI is not suitable as a representative index of vegetation status in such areas with seasonal snow cover.
Comment 2:
The third paragraph of the Introduction (Lines 47-49) only explains the beneficial effect but no possible inhibitory effect of snow cover on vegetation growth. In addition to its soil moisture and insulation effects, snow cover may also postpone the heat accumulation of low-growing vegetation in spring and block the entry of photosynthetically active radiation, thus impeding vegetation growth. Please introduce this aspect into your Introduction or describe more about other possible effects of snow cover on vegetation growth.
Comment 3:
In the context of global warming, significant changes in the duration, depth, and spatial pattern of snow cover are likely to affect vegetation growth. Why did you choose the snow cover duration as the snow cover parameter in this study? Is there any literature to support the representativeness of this parameter?
Comment 4:
Please add the significance of studying "climate legacy" and "snow cover legacy" in paragraph 4 of the Introduction.
Comment 5:
Directly state the name of the study area (Nanweng River National Nature Reserve) in the title of Figure 1.
Comment 6:
Section 2.2: Why do you define the distance limit within 3 km to the river and categorize the range into two groups (within 1 km and 2-3 km) for analysis of climate legacy effect from distance from the river? Does this category exclude the range of 1-2 km from the rivers? I also think this category too rough. I suggest quantifying the relationship between climate legacy and distance from rivers. For example, how many years the climate legacy changes with a 1-km increase of distance from the river. And how to consider the impact of the distance from a point to two (or more) adjacent rivers on its climate legacy?
Comment 7:
Section 2.3: How to represent the NDVI of a certain pixel for a given year, annual mean or maximum, or whatever? Please describe in detail the data preprocessing steps.
Comment 8:
Section 3.1: Lines 172-176 are exactly the same as lines 140-144, put it in other words, and the results of Figures 2 and 3 need to be described and summarized.
Comment 9:
The Conclusion part overgeneralizes the climate legacy, and its lasting for 1-5 years is the scope that you have defined in your method (Lines 153-155) and lack sense, please summarize and point out some important conclusion.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguagePlease check the full text carefully and improve your English writing.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsTitle: Snow Cover Legacy and River Buffering Effect on Vegetation Growth in a Boreal Riparian Forest
Manuscript Number: 2520377
The Authors of the paper detected the influences of Snow Cover Legacy and River Buffering on vegetation growth in a Boreal Riparian Forest of the Daxing' an Mountains in China. They focus on analyzes the vegetation growth in response to temperature, precipitation, snow cover duration and presents a comparative analysis of influences of temperature, precipitation and snow cover duration on vegetation growth. However, I do think that in its present form, this article is not suitable for Remote Sensing. The main scientific contribution or the novelty of this study in Remote Sensing science is not clear. The authors should focus on the remote sensing novel contribution of their study. The following points should be clarified:
-The title should be modified, the temperature, precipitation, snow cover and river distance were considered and analyzed in this paper, but the title doesn’t present them well.
- Materials and Methods: This section should be greatly enhanced. Add the flow chart. “Random site selection” -“Thus 50 sites from each vegetation type (shrub, deciduous coniferous forest, and deciduous broadleaf forest) and at each distance from a river were expected to be selected. But only 29 sites in shrublands were found 2-3 km away from a river, therefore we obtained 279 sites in total.”, why chose 50 sites? Why not consider all grids. In this paper, you chose the distances within 1 km (close) and 2-3 km (far) away from a river, why? No description in the methods? And why not chose the distance between 1-2 km. The method of integrating these data with different resolutions was not presented. Also does the paper lack a substantial amount of description of both data and methodologies. This section lacks (quantitative) information about the consistency and limitations of usage of basically all data sets used in this study.
- Results: This section should be greatly enhanced and analyzed in detail, it is too short. What are the main finding in the results, no detail analyzes in 3.1 and 3.2, as well as for Figures 2, 3. The only one paragraph in 3.1 should be moved to the method. Also does the paper lack a substantial amount of description of the findings. This comes together with a quite unstructured layout and interpretation of the results, an insufficiently detailed analyze missing key elements.
-The discussion section is rich, a large information and description were considered, while some key figures (e.g., the duration of temperature, precipitation, snow cover legacy) can be discussed compare to other researches.
This study is in itself very interesting. However, the way the authors try to convey the key results to the reader is confusing. Therefore I reject the manuscript in its present form.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNo comments.
