High-Resolution Transect Sampling and Multiple Scale Diversity Analyses for Evaluating Grassland Resilience to Climatic Extremes
, Gábor Szabó 2,3, Sándor Csete 4, Dragica Purger 5, Judit Házi 6, András István Csathó 7, Giandiego Campetella 8, Roberto Canullo 8, Stefano Chelli 8, James Lee Tsakalos 8,9, Gábor Ónodi 1, György Kröel-Dulay 1 and Zita Zimmermann 1,2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper sent for review is very interesting because it concerns semi-natural grasslands, which play a key role in maintaining biodiversity. However, they are among the disappearing habitats due to changes in land use. Therefore, this type of research helps to understand biodiversity's response to climate change. The results of the research can be used in the monitoring of various habitats by implementing high-resolution transect sampling.
I believe that the selection of statistical methods and their description are correct. I am impressed by the large amount of data compiled in tables and figures, not only in the main part of the paper, but also in the supplements increasing the quality of the publication. The manuscript is written carefully.
Nevertheless, I would like to point out a few things:
Authors use term “natural grassland” which was used in the past for grazing or mowing – I recommend "semi-natural grassland"
Some figures, tables and their captions (including attachments) have a different font size and type – this should be standardized
I am wondering about the presence of the Alopecurus pratensis as a dominant in loess meadow steppe at Tompapuszta because the other species are characteristic of dry grasslands as well as Csathó and Csathó (2009) state that the major part of that area is covered by Salvio nemorosae-Festucetum rupicolae association.
The names of all objects should be the same in the figures and tables (e.g. in Fig. 5 it is “sand steppe 2, Fülöpháza” and in the Table 3 it is “Fülöpháza sand grassland”)
I have marked other, minor remarks in the text.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Vácrátót, 1 March, 2022
Detailed response to Referees:
Referee 1.
The paper sent for review is very interesting because it concerns semi-natural grasslands, which play a key role in maintaining biodiversity. However, they are among the disappearing habitats due to changes in land use. Therefore, this type of research helps to understand biodiversity's response to climate change. The results of the research can be used in the monitoring of various habitats by implementing high-resolution transect sampling.
I believe that the selection of statistical methods and their description are correct. I am impressed by the large amount of data compiled in tables and figures, not only in the main part of the paper, but also in the supplements increasing the quality of the publication. The manuscript is written carefully.
Response: Thank you for your detailed evaluation and for constructive comments. We respond point to point to your comments below.
Nevertheless, I would like to point out a few things:
1, Authors use term “natural grassland” which was used in the past for grazing or mowing – I recommend "semi-natural grassland"
Response: We kindly disagree with you in this very important point.
You are right that most of the grasslands are semi-natural in Europe. They developed after forest clearing and they have been maintained by human management (grazing and mowing). You are also right that we have several semi-natural grasslands in Hungary (mostly at higher elevations and in the Western part of our country). However, the particular grasslands at Battonya, at Fülöpháza and at Csévharaszt in this paper are natural grasslands, because they are well preserved remnants of the original grassland vegetation (Molnár et al. 2012).
The loess meadow steppe (Battonya site) is a rare remnant of the original climatically zonal vegetation with deep chernozem soil and with many rare and endemic species. For example, we have lesser blind mole rat (Nannospalax (superspecies leucodon)) at our site. According to historical records and soil analyses, this site has never been ploughed and never been fertilized with artificial fertilizers. It has been managed by traditional extensive grazing and mowing. However, this specific traditional management was very close to the original natural disturbance regime and could preserve the vegetation (Bartha 2007). The vegetation of sand steppes is also original with many endemic species. Due to moving sand and poor soil, there were always open surfaces where this type of grasslands could survive.
We compared our results with natural grasslands in the United States (US LTER sites). There is a consensus in literature that they are all natural grasslands. In fact, these sites had also human influences in the past (some of them even were overgrazed occasionally). We visited and worked in these LTER grassland sites in the U.S., so we have direct experiences.
In general, the concept of naturalness could be debated. However, the related literature and our own results show clearly that natural grasslands and degraded grasslands respond differently to climate change (cf. Adler and Levine 2007, Virágh et al. 2008, Cleland et al. 2013, Kröel-Dulay et al. 2015, Harrison et al. 2015, Li et al. 2015). In this study, our results were consistent with other results from natural grasslands (Adler and Levine 2007, Cleland et al. 2013) but different from other grassland sites which were under stronger human influences (Harrison et al. 2015, Li eta l. 2015). Using other term than „natural” would confuse the message of our paper. Therefore, we prefer keeping the term “natural” for these particular well preserved and seriously protected grasslands.
(Similar notes from Referee 1 were made in the pdf version as well:
L 103: „they are rather semi-natural grasslands”
L 137: „The authors write about grassland management (grazing or mowing), so I suggest using the term "semi-natural grasslands".
As a response, please, consider our above arguments to these points as well.)
2, Some figures, tables and their captions (including attachments) have a different font size and type – this should be standardized
Response: Thank you. We carefully revised (exchanged) figures, tables and their captions (including attachments) according to your suggestion. As we have specific, very extensive appendix, we prefer to publish it as a (downloadable) separate file, i.e. not part of the main text.
3, I am wondering about the presence of the Alopecurus pratensis as a dominant in loess meadow steppe at Tompapuszta because the other species are characteristic of dry grasslands as well as Csathó and Csathó (2009) state that the major part of that area is covered by Salvio nemorosae-Festucetum rupicolae association.
Response: Thank you for this important comment. You are right. To avoid potential confusion we changed the related text. The new version is:
“The dominant species was Festuca valesiaca. Other abundant plant species were perennial grasses Poa angustifolia, Carex praecox, Elymus hispidus, Alopecurus pratensis, and perennial forbs Teucrium chamaedrys, Galium verum, Fragaria viridis, Thymus pannonicus and Salvia nemorosa.”
(There are some small depressions with more mesic vegetation at Battonya site where Alopecurus pratensis is dominant. However, it is not dominant within the main vegetation type that we studied in this paper.)
4, The names of all objects should be the same in the figures and tables (e.g. in Fig. 5 it is “sand steppe2, Fülöpháza” and in the Table 3 it is “Fülöpháza sand grassland”)
Response: Thank you for this comment. We corrected the related names over the whole manuscript.
5, I have marked other, minor remarks in the text (detailed notes in the pdf).
Response: Thank you very much for all comments. We accepted all and exchanged all figures and tables using unified formats and unified letter sizes. We also improved the quality of figures and tables.
L 58: space
Response: removed
L 59: „alphabetically”
Response: done. We completely changed to format of citations according to the standard format of LAND.
L 62-63: „Species richness decreased due to increasing temperature (Gruner et al. 2017, Piseddu et al. 2021) and decreased precipitation (Korell et al. 2021).”
Response: we corrected this sentence
L 148:
„Most species, with the exception of the meadow foxtail, are characteristic of dry grasslands. Csathó and Csathó (2009) state that the major part of the the Külső-gulya meadow of Battonya-Tompapuszta is covered by Salvio nemorosae-Festucetum rupicolae association.”
Response: Thank you for this comment. You are right. We changed the sentence and removed the potential confusion: “The dominant species was Festuca valesiaca. Other abundant plant species were perennial grasses Poa angustifolia, Carex praecox, Elymus hispidus, Alopecurus pratensis, and perennial forbs Teucrium chamaedrys, Galium verum, Fragaria viridis, Thymus pannonicus and Salvia nemorosa.”
(There are some small depressions with more mesic vegetation at Battonya site where Alopecurus pratensis is dominant. However, it is not dominant within the main vegetation type that we studied in this paper.)
L 278: “explanations as on fig. 2”
Response: We improved the caption to Figure 3 adding explanations as on Figure 2.
L 307: (Table3) „the names of all objects should be the same int he figures and tables”
Response: Thank you. We carefully revised all figures and tables. In the new versions we used unified names and unified format with the same type and size of letters etc…
L 750: „font”
Response: corrected
L 757: „No journal – I don’t know if the item can be included”
Response: corrected. We removed this reference from the Material and Methods section and cited the following:
- Tsakalos, J.L. An R package to analyze within-community spatial organization using species combinations. 2022. GitHub repository, https://github.com/jamestsakalos/comspat
We cited the other manuscript (which went through the first revision round) at the end of the References because this paper had been cited in the Supplementary material.
- Tsakalos, J.L.; Chelli, S.; Campetella, G.; Canullo, R.; Simonetti, E.; Bartha, S. An R package to analyze within-community spatial organization using species combinations. Ecography 2022, (Manuscript resubmitted after minor revision)
References
Adler, P.B.; Levine J.M. Contrasting relationships between precipitation and species richness in space and time. Oikos 2007, 116, 221–232. doi: 10.1111/j.2006.0030-1299.15327.x,
Bartha, S. Composition, differentiation and dynamics in the forest steppe biome. In: Slope steppes, loess steppes and forest steppe meadows in Hungary. Illyés, E., Bölöni, J., Ed. Chapter 6. MTA ÖBKI, Budapest, 2007, pp. 194–210.
Cleland, E.E.; Collins, S.L.; Dickson, T.L.; Farrer, E.C.; Gross, K.L.; Gherardi, L.A.; Hallett, L.M.; Hobbs, R.J.; Hsu, J.S.; Turnbull, L.; Suding, K.N. Sensitivity of grassland plant community composition to spatial vs. temporal variation in precipitation. Ecology 2013, 94, 1687–1696. https://doi.org/10.1890/12-1006.1
Harrison, S.P.; Gornish, E.S.; Copeland, S. Climate-driven diversity loss in a grassland community. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2015, 112, 8672–8677. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1502074112
Li, Z.; Ma, W.; Liang, C.; Liu, Z.; Wang, W.; Wang, L. Long-term vegetation dynamics driven by climatic variations in the Inner Mongolia grassland: findings from 30-year monitoring. Landsc. Ecol. 2015, 30, 1701–1711. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-014-0068-1
Molnár, Zs.; Biró, M.; Bartha, S.; Fekete, G. Past trends, present state and future prospects of Hungarian forest-steppes. In: Eurasian Steppes. Ecological Problems and Livelihoods in a Changing World. Werger, M., Ed. Chapter 7. Springer, 2012, pp. 209-252.
Virágh, K.; Horváth, A.; Bartha S.; Somodi, I. A multiscale methodological approach for monitoring the effectiveness of grassland management. Community Ecol. 2008, 9, 237–246. https://doi.org/10.1556/comec.9.2008.2.13
Kind regards,
Sándor Bartha
(On behalf of all co-authors)
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Long-term transect data from three natural grasslands with different species pools, soils, landscape contexts, and land use histories are used in this study. The authors were able to investigate scale dependence and spatial synchrony of diversity patterns within and between sites by analysing these specific belt transect data of contiguous small sampling units. Several droughts, including one extreme event between 2011 and 2012, were studied over a 14-year period. The authors demonstrated that all natural grasslands responded to droughts with significant fluctuations in diversity, but they remained stable overall. Annuals demonstrated high resilience across all sites, whereas perennials were drought resistant.
The article is well written and just needs some changes:
1) please discuss all limitations of this study
2) image quality must be improved.
Author Response
Vácrátót, 1 March, 2022
Detailed response to Referees:
Referee 2
Long-term transect data from three natural grasslands with different species pools, soils, landscape contexts, and land use histories are used in this study. The authors were able to investigate scale dependence and spatial synchrony of diversity patterns within and between sites by analysing these specific belt transect data of contiguous small sampling units. Several droughts, including one extreme event between 2011 and 2012, were studied over a 14-year period. The authors demonstrated that all natural grasslands responded to droughts with significant fluctuations in diversity, but they remained stable overall. Annuals demonstrated high resilience across all sites, whereas perennials were drought resistant.
Response: Thank you for your evaluation and for positive comments.
The article is well written and just needs some changes:
1) please discuss all limitations of this study
Response: We added a new paragraph to Discussion. The new text is:
4.6. Limitations and needs for future research
Our study was constrained by the limited availability of long-term monitoring data (both vegetation data and meteorological data). We had only three sites and a limited length of observations. Our sites represent well-preserved grasslands in protected National Parks. However, it would be important to extend the scope of monitoring and establish similar regular observations in various semi-natural and man-made habitats for assessing the adaptive capacity and threshold of resilience in these ecosystems.
2) image quality must be improved.
Response: We have exchanged all figures and tables using unified format as requested. We also improved Figure 1 using better quality photos and images.
Kind regards,
Sándor Bartha
(On behalf of all co-authors)
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
