The Impact of Wildfires on Soil CO2 Emission in Middle Taiga Forests in Central Siberia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Title: The impact of wildfires on soil CO2 emission in middle taiga 2 forests in Central Siberia
By: Anastasia Makhnykina, Alexey Panov and Anatoly Prokushkin
Review comments
The authors compared soil CO2 emissions among 5 burned sites with different time since last fire. They used a space for time substitution to explore soil CO2 emission characteristics along forest succession gradients after fire disturbances. To my knowledge, the idea is new and there are quite few researches documented. The study is crucial for understanding carbon cycling process of forest ecosystem after fire disturbances. In general, the manuscripts were written not bad. Therefore, I suggest a minor revision.
General comments
My general concern is that whether the ecological conditions are the same or nearly same? If not, you could not be sure that the difference of soil CO2 emissions among various sites is due to forest fire, and other environmental factors may matter, such as elevation, slope, aspect, forest types etc. I suggest add a table to show the ecological conditions of the observed sites for readers to better understand the topographical conditions of the 5 sites.
Specific comments
1. Line 24: change “located” to “locates”.
2. Line 28: cite several references after “emission and assimilation fluxes, carbon pools etc”.
3. Line 76: change “was” to “is”.
4. In section 3.1, statistical analysis is needed to test whether there is significant differences between the seasonal meteorological parameters and the long-term mean ones.
5. Line 134: change “form” to “from”.
6. Line 141: change “in” to “was”.
7. Add a subtitle, 3.2.1 soil temperature and moisture, just after 3.2…
8. Line 151: change “monitor” to “monitored”.
9. Line 159: add “was” before “detected”.
10. Line 166: delete “-” before both 19.1 °C and 18 °C.
11. Line 168: more details are needed for the difference for the landscape position, ground water level or stand density, and also relevant references are needed to cite.
12. Line 183: delete “the”.
13. Line 190: change “there is” to “was”.
14. Line 193: add “is” before “from”.
15. Add a subtitle, 3.2.2 soil carbon emissions, after line 199.
16. Line 214: “…after fire demonstrated almost the same flux rates”. The same with who?
17. Line 264: delete “.” at the end of the line.
18. Line 265: change “indicated” to “indicating”, and change “and” between 1 and 23 to “,”.
19. Line 266: add “was” before “higher”.
20. Line 268: add “was” after “fire”.
21. Line 209-310: this sentence,“The soil emission rates control from the ground land cover presented in our case by 309 lichens”, is unclear. Rewrite it.
22. Line 317: change “in” to “by”.
23. Line 320: what is “fire successional stage combine”?
24. Line 331: update “changes” to “change”.
need proof
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for your suggestions and comments.
Below in this document we put the answers to all of your comments.
Concerning to your General comments:
My general concern is that whether the ecological conditions are the same or nearly same? If not, you could not be sure that the difference of soil CO2 emissions among various sites is due to forest fire, and other environmental factors may matter, such as elevation, slope, aspect, forest types etc.. I suggest add a table to show the ecological conditions of the observed sites for readers to better understand the topographical conditions of the 5 sites.
Answer: We put in the text new table with more detailed sites description.
Concerning to your specific comments:
- Line 24: change “located” to “locates”.
Answer: We changed it. Thank you.
- Line 28: cite several references after “emission and assimilation fluxes, carbon pools etc”.
Answer: We added the references.
- Line 76: change “was” to “is”.
Answer: We changed it.
- In section 3.1, statistical analysis is needed to test whether there is significant differences between the seasonal meteorological parameters and the long-term mean ones.
Answer: We mentioned it in the text that season of 2019 was characterized by the mean climatic conditions and they are similar to long-term mean. So, the differences with long-term mean are not significant and we didn’t provide this information in text.
- Line 134: change “form” to “from”.
Answer: We changed to correct word.
- Line 141: change “in” to “was”.
Answer: We changed it.
- Add a subtitle, 3.2.1 soil temperature and moisture, just after 3.2…
Answer: We added new subtitle.
- Line 151: change “monitor” to “monitored”.
Answer: We changed it.
- Line 159: add “was” before “detected”.
Answer: We added it.
- Line 166: delete “-” before both 19.1 °C and 18 °C.
Answer: It was deleted before both numbers.
- Line 168: more details are needed for the difference for the landscape position, ground water level or stand density, and also relevant references are needed to cite.
Answer: We added a table with site description – Table 1.
- Line 183: delete “the”.
Answer: It deleted it.
- Line 190: change “there is” to “was”.
Answer: We replaced it.
- Line 193: add “is” before “from”.
Answer: We added it.
- Add a subtitle, 3.2.2 soil carbon emissions, after line 199.
Answer: We added new subtitle.
- Line 214: “…after fire demonstrated almost the same flux rates”. The same with who?
Answer: With the previous site – We’ve added the explanation in text.
- Line 264: delete “.” at the end of the line.
Answer: We deleted a point.
- Line 265: change “indicated” to “indicating”, and change “and” between 1 and 23 to “,”.
Answer: We replaced both of them.
- Line 266: add “was” before “higher”.
Answer: Thank you. We added it.
- Line 268: add “was” after “fire”.
Answer: We added it.
- Line 209-310: this sentence, “The soil emission rates control from the ground land cover presented in our case by 309 lichens”, is unclear. Rewrite it.
Answer: Original: “The soil emission rates control from the ground land cover presented in our case by 309lichens (Figure 8), even so the time of their recovery takes a lot of time.”
We made just a mistake here and rephrased this sentence: The soil emission rates control by the representing of ground land cover consists mainly of lichens (Figure 8), even if the time of their recovery takes a lot of time.
- Line 317: change “in” to “by”.
Answer: We changed it.
- Line 320: what is “fire successional stage combine”?
Answer: Original: “23 years after fire successional stage combine still observable fire impact and the level of recovery when ecosystem may behave as a natural undisturbed area.”
We a bit rephrased this sentence:
Successional stage of 23 years after fire combines observable fire impact and features of the natural undisturbed area.
- Line 331: update “changes” to “change”.
Answer: It was changed.
With the best wishes,
The author's team of the manuscript
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments:
The topic of the study is interesting and relevant. The most limiting factor of the study is that there is no replication of measurement locations within each stage of the chronosequence, which precludes any statistical analysis. Thus, the only conclusion that can be legitimately drawn is that there was a trend of increasing soil moisture, organic matter, and CO2 efflux with time since fire. In this light, the figures with bar graphs should be replaced with regressions, although they will only have five points per regression. The authors should also be extremely cautious in attributing the trend to time since fire, as many factors could coincidentally cause a similar trend. Those identified by the authors themselves include tree stand density, species composition, soil characteristics, and microtopography (e.g., lines 166, 219). The most the authors can say is that the trend may be because of time since fire, but it may be because of other unmeasured factors.
The methods are not well described enough to understand the graphs, and the graph legends do not have sufficient information, especially with regard to replication. It is not clear how many measurements were made within each month from June to September. It seems like more than one, given the many points in Figure 7.
An important problem with the manuscript is that there is not really any mechanistic hypothesis, or alternative mechanistic hypotheses. As written the authors basically just say that past studies have not been very conclusive, so they are going to measure carbon efflux and other variables over a chronosequence, but there is basically no science to explain how fire and time since fire might influence those effluxes, or why moisture and temperature are expected to be related to CO2 efflux. Presenting mechanistic hypotheses for how organic matter, soil moisture, soil temperature, and time since fire interact would help support the notion that the observed trend is meaningful instead of coincidental since there is no replication of plots.
The Results-Discussion section needs to be divided into a proper Results and Discussion section. As written this section is very disorganized and difficult to read. It is hard to tell where the authors are talking about their own results and results of other studies.
The English needs to be significantly improved throughout.
Specific comments:
Line 19 The abstract would benefit by explaining the direction of changes that occurred. Did soil emission rates increase or decrease with time since fire?
Line 26 Vulnerable to climate change specifically?
Line 39 I feel like this paragraph needs some more qualification. If a disturbance is natural, then it is hard to argue that it threatens natural ecosystem processes. Maybe what you mean to say is that climate change may causes changes to natural disturbance regimes that that are disruptive to ecosystem processes relative to historic conditions. Or maybe you mean to say that natural disturbance regimes do not always have results that are ideal for societal goals of increasing carbon sequestration.
Line 43 The two sentences in this paragraph seem somewhat redundant.
Line 54 Could you say how they are affected? Is GHG flux from soil decreased because of the reduction of soil organic matter following fires?
Line 55 I suggest swapping the first and second sentences to provide a better topic sentence.
Line 65 I suggest combining this paragraph with the previous paragraph.
Line 81 I am not sure if it makes sense to call the last treatment a "control" if fire is part of a natural cycle. I suggest simply calling it 1898. You should clarify whether there was a fire in 1898, or if that is just the earliest record of the forest and there has been no fire since. In either case I think just using the date would work well, "pre-1898".
Line 92 For an international audience it would nice to say whether these species are woody plants or herbs.
Line 94 Did none of the woody plants resprout after fire?
Line 111 The frequency of measurements from June to September needs to be stated. I assume that this was the period that the ground was not covered with snow, but it should be explained why this period was chosen.
Line 144 The explanation for why you are comparing 2019 with mean conditions should be explained at the beginning of the section, although it is still not clear why 2019 is the most important year to consider. Overlapping the bar graphs and line graphs is confusing. I suggest just having two different graph panels and use all bar graphs.
Line 157 The caption should make clear what the unit of replication is from which the error bars are calculated. Are they just the repeated measurements at each site? The graph would be more intuitive if the shortest time since fire were on top, as that is the order in which sites are referred to in the text.
Line 202 This background information should be in the Introduction. I am not sure what is meant by "reduced decomposition may eventually offfset soil combustion emissions".
Line 236 I am not sure what is meant by "fixed".
Line 239 This is the first mention of fire severity, so I am not sure what it is referring to. In the Introduction it is claimed that the different sites had similar fire severity. I suppose you are referring to other research, but this needs to be made clear.
Line 253 I am not sure what the error bars represent - multiple measurements within each month?
Line 274 The caption needs to make clear what are the units of replication. I am actually not sure how so many points were generated from one measurement per month, unless there were multiple measurements per month, which is not explained in the Introduction.
Line 299 This is the first mention of lichens. Measurement of a lichen layer should be explained in the Methods.
The English needs to be corrected by a native English speaker or maybe AI.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for your suggestions and comments.
Below in this document we put the answers to all of your comments.
Concerning to your General comments:
The topic of the study is interesting and relevant. The most limiting factor of the study is that there is no replication of measurement locations within each stage of the chronosequence, which precludes any statistical analysis. Thus, the only conclusion that can be legitimately drawn is that there was a trend of increasing soil moisture, organic matter, and CO2 efflux with time since fire. In this light, the figures with bar graphs should be replaced with regressions, although they will only have five points per regression. The authors should also be extremely cautious in attributing the trend to time since fire, as many factors could coincidentally cause a similar trend. Those identified by the authors themselves include tree stand density, species composition, soil characteristics, and microtopography (e.g., lines 166, 219). The most the authors can say is that the trend may be because of time since fire, but it may be because of other unmeasured factors.
The methods are not well described enough to understand the graphs, and the graph legends do not have sufficient information, especially with regard to replication. It is not clear how many measurements were made within each month from June to September. It seems like more than one, given the many points in Figure 7.
An important problem with the manuscript is that there is not really any mechanistic hypothesis, or alternative mechanistic hypotheses. As written the authors basically just say that past studies have not been very conclusive, so they are going to measure carbon efflux and other variables over a chronosequence, but there is basically no science to explain how fire and time since fire might influence those effluxes, or why moisture and temperature are expected to be related to CO2 efflux. Presenting mechanistic hypotheses for how organic matter, soil moisture, soil temperature, and time since fire interact would help support the notion that the observed trend is meaningful instead of coincidental since there is no replication of plots.
The Results-Discussion section needs to be divided into a proper Results and Discussion section. As written this section is very disorganized and difficult to read. It is hard to tell where the authors are talking about their own results and results of other studies.
The English needs to be significantly improved throughout.
Concerning to your Specific comments:
Line 19 The abstract would benefit by explaining the direction of changes that occurred. Did soil emission rates increase or decrease with time since fire?
Line 26 Vulnerable to climate change specifically?
Line 39 I feel like this paragraph needs some more qualification. If a disturbance is natural, then it is hard to argue that it threatens natural ecosystem processes. Maybe what you mean to say is that climate change may causes changes to natural disturbance regimes that that are disruptive to ecosystem processes relative to historic conditions. Or maybe you mean to say that natural disturbance regimes do not always have results that are ideal for societal goals of increasing carbon sequestration.
Line 43 The two sentences in this paragraph seem somewhat redundant.
Line 54 Could you say how they are affected? Is GHG flux from soil decreased because of the reduction of soil organic matter following fires?
Line 55 I suggest swapping the first and second sentences to provide a better topic sentence.
Line 65 I suggest combining this paragraph with the previous paragraph.
Line 81 I am not sure if it makes sense to call the last treatment a "control" if fire is part of a natural cycle. I suggest simply calling it 1898. You should clarify whether there was a fire in 1898, or if that is just the earliest record of the forest and there has been no fire since. In either case I think just using the date would work well, "pre-1898".
Line 92 For an international audience it would nice to say whether these species are woody plants or herbs.
Line 94 Did none of the woody plants resprout after fire?
Line 111 The frequency of measurements from June to September needs to be stated. I assume that this was the period that the ground was not covered with snow, but it should be explained why this period was chosen.
Line 144 The explanation for why you are comparing 2019 with mean conditions should be explained at the beginning of the section, although it is still not clear why 2019 is the most important year to consider. Overlapping the bar graphs and line graphs is confusing. I suggest just having two different graph panels and use all bar graphs.
Line 157 The caption should make clear what the unit of replication is from which the error bars are calculated. Are they just the repeated measurements at each site? The graph would be more intuitive if the shortest time since fire were on top, as that is the order in which sites are referred to in the text.
Line 202 This background information should be in the Introduction. I am not sure what is meant by "reduced decomposition may eventually offfset soil combustion emissions".
Line 236 I am not sure what is meant by "fixed".
Line 239 This is the first mention of fire severity, so I am not sure what it is referring to. In the Introduction it is claimed that the different sites had similar fire severity. I suppose you are referring to other research, but this needs to be made clear.
Line 253 I am not sure what the error bars represent - multiple measurements within each month?
Line 274 The caption needs to make clear what are the units of replication. I am actually not sure how so many points were generated from one measurement per month, unless there were multiple measurements per month, which is not explained in the Introduction.
Line 299 This is the first mention of lichens. Measurement of a lichen layer should be explained in the Methods.
With the best regards,
The team of authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper was somewhat improved by the authors. Overall, I suggest combining more of the sentences into paragraphs. Try to avoid paragraphs with only one sentence.
Line 10 Change "a verage" to "average".
Line 61 Add "are" after "dependent".
Line 75 On the basis of what prior evidence do you predict that the recovery period will be 30 years?
Line 96 Delete "further".
Line 126 Change to "This period of time was chosen due to the lack of snow, when biogeochemical processes were active, including soil CO2 emission." if that is correct.
Lien 132 Change "in" to "during".
Line 134 End the sentence with "calculated" then start a new sentence.
Line 136 Change "at a time" to "during each monthly sampling period". I am assuming the measurements were monthly based on the figures.
Line 147 Change "season" to "seasonal".
Line 148 Change this sentence to "During 2019 total precipitation was 318 mm (from May to September) and mean air temperature +12.9 °C."
Line 151 Change "fixed" to "was".
Line 152 Change "in" to "was".
Line 155 Add "were" after "values".
Line 157 Change "are showing" to "show".
Line 159 Change "demonstrated higher number" to "was higher".
Line 160 Change the comma to "by" and delete "higher". Change "the" to "when".
Line 161 Change "differences" to "difference".
Line 162 Change colon to "was that".
Line 171 Change "are representing" to "represent".
Line 181 Place a comma after "(Figure 4)".
Line 187 I would read better to say "The soil temperature was around 20 degrees C at the 5 cm depth, 19.1 degrees C at 10 cm depth, and 18 degrees C at the greatest depth." How deep was the greatest depth?
Line 189 The sentence beginning "It could be explained . . ." should be in the Discussion.
Line 192 Add "the" before "impact". I am not sure what is meant by "it might suggest finding soil temperature gradient more than 1 degree C during the season," so this sentence needs to be rewritten.
Line 193 Change the sentence to "The soil temperature at this site was almost the same as in the site one year after fire." I think restating the temperature is not necessary.
Line 196 Change "even smaller" to "the most gradual". I suggest formatting the sentence the same way as the similar one above.
Line 202 The sentence beginning "'From these observations" should be in the Discussion.
Line 206 International journals usually use periods instead of commas for decimal points. Same with other graphs.
Line 210 Change "smallest soil moisture fixed" to "lowest soil moisture was". I think the second sentence is unnecessary because it is clear in the graph.
Line 213 Change this sentence to "The site at 23 years following fire marked a transition to recovery within the fire-impacted area."
Line 216 I would just skip this sentence and say that the site with the longest time since fire has the highest soil moisture, as all of these results are clear in the figure. Combine all of these sentences into one paragraph.
Line 223 I do not understand the first sentence. I would rewrite the paragraph, "The patterns of CO2 flux over the chronosequence was similar to that of soil moisture. The regression analysis showed an increase in emission rates over time (R2 = 0.93). The maximum fluxes at each site was in the middle of July. The lowest soil CO2 emission rates were in the earliest (middle of June) and latest (middle of September) measurements." Otherwise I would delete the next paragraph, as it is hard to put these in groups when there are no replicates.
Line 270 Change "is" to "are".
Line 271 Change "1 and 23" to "1, 23,".
Line 272 Change "0.4 that means" to "0.4, meaning".
Line 281 Why are there no results (figure) to do with the statement, "Relations with soil moisture regime are opposite to soil temperature for burned sites."?
Line 282 Change sentence to, "For sites longer than 14 years following fire, CO2 emissions first increased then decreased within increasing soil moisture (Figure 7b)."
Line 283 Change "again showed the similar" to "was similar".
Line 284 Change "stages" to "stage". Change the following sentence to "The highest CO2 emissions appear to be around 0.3 m3 m-3 [42]."
Line 290 Change sentence to "From the chronosequence sites the two lowest organic matter sites were the ones most recently burned (Table 2)" if that is correct.
Line 291 Add "were" after concentrated.
Line 292 Change to "The O-horizon contained . . ."
Line 306 I do not understand this sentence.
Line 307 Change to, "The analysis showed that seasonal soil CO2 emissions had a lower correlation with organic matter in the O-horizon than in the lichen ground cover."
Line 309 This sentence would be appropriate in the Discussion.
Line 315 This is repetition of the Results.
Line 319 This sentence is a better beginning to the Discussion section.
Line 320 The sentence beginning "The main emission values . . ." and the rest of the paragraph is repetition of the Results.
Line 326 This sentence/paragraph does not add much, as it does not address changes in carbon or CO2 emissions over time.
Line 329 I suggest rewriting, "In contrast to our study, in a Canadian boreal forest, CO2 emissions were three times higher at 16 years after a fire than at the site 32 years after fire."
Line 332 I do not know what is meant by "scars" - burned areas? I think the sentence beginning, "Interestingly . . ." should be a new paragraph.
Line 337 What would be the mechanism by which windfall would cause CO2 emissions to be lower than expected?
Line 342 It might be helpful to mention what this means in terms of the fire return interval.
Line 348 Change "It was fixed that after . . ." to just "After . . .".
Line 358 It does not make sense to me how more dead wood and debris would cause more solar radiation. Do you mean that the wind storm opened the tree canopy and allowed more solar radiation?
Line 368 Change "we may fix the called" to "there has been observed the".
Line 372 Change to "After 23 years since fire there the soil emission rates remained relatively constant" if that is what you mean.
Line 373 I suggest changing to just "During the summer season, moisture conditions have an especially strong role in regulating soil emission dynamics." if that is right.
Line 381 I suggest changing to " to one fourth of that in the 121 years since fire area."
Line 385 I suggest changing to "Between 46 years and 121 years following the fire the emission fluxes increased 30%" if that is right.
Line 390 "1, 23 years, and older" seems like the whole chronosequence.
I did my best to correct the English. There is still English that is not exactly standard, but it is comprehensible.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for your suggestions and comments.
Below in this document we put the answers to all of your comments.
Concerning to your General comments:
The paper was somewhat improved by the authors. Overall, I suggest combining more of the sentences into paragraphs. Try to avoid paragraphs with only one sentence.
Authors: We combined all single sentences to paragraphs.
Concerning to your Specific comments:
Line 10 Change "a verage" to "average".
Authors: We corrected this mistake.
Line 61 Add "are" after "dependent".
Authors: We added it.
Line 75 On the basis of what prior evidence do you predict that the recovery period will be 30 years?
Authors: We made this prediction based on the previous studies. Links to these studies are 30, 41 in the reference list.
Line 96 Delete "further".
Authors: We deleted this word.
Line 126 Change to "This period of time was chosen due to the lack of snow, when biogeochemical processes were active, including soil CO2 emission." if that is correct.
Authors: Yes, it’s correct. We changed this sentence.
Lien 132 Change "in" to "during".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 134 End the sentence with "calculated" then start a new sentence.
Authors: We divided the sentence to two.
Line 136 Change "at a time" to "during each monthly sampling period". I am assuming the measurements were monthly based on the figures.
Authors: No, here we mentioned that per one measurement we’ve got 15 data points because of at each site we have 5 PVC collars and we made three repetitions for each of them. But we included some correction you suggested.
Line 147 Change "season" to "seasonal".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 148 Change this sentence to "During 2019 total precipitation was 318 mm (from May to September) and mean air temperature +12.9 °C."
Authors: We changed the sentence.
Line 151 Change "fixed" to "was".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 152 Change "in" to "was".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 155 Add "were" after "values".
Authors: We added it.
Line 157 Change "are showing" to "show".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 159 Change "demonstrated higher number" to "was higher".
Authors: We changed this part of sentence.
Line 160 Change the comma to "by" and delete "higher". Change "the" to "when".
Authors: We corrected this sentence.
Line 161 Change "differences" to "difference".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 162 Change colon to "was that".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 171 Change "are representing" to "represent".
Authors: We made this correction.
Line 181 Place a comma after "(Figure 4)".
Authors: We put there a comma.
Line 187 I would read better to say "The soil temperature was around 20 degrees C at the 5 cm depth, 19.1 degrees C at 10 cm depth, and 18 degrees C at the greatest depth." How deep was the greatest depth?
Authors: Thank you! We made this correction. The greatest depth was 15 cm.
Line 189 The sentence beginning "It could be explained . . ." should be in the Discussion.
Authors: We moved this part to Discussion.
Line 192 Add "the" before "impact". I am not sure what is meant by "it might suggest finding soil temperature gradient more than 1 degree C during the season," so this sentence needs to be rewritten.
Authors: We rephrased this sentence.
Line 193 Change the sentence to "The soil temperature at this site was almost the same as in the site one year after fire." I think restating the temperature is not necessary.
Authors: We changed this sentence.
Line 196 Change "even smaller" to "the most gradual". I suggest formatting the sentence the same way as the similar one above.
Authors: We made these changes.
Line 202 The sentence beginning "'From these observations" should be in the Discussion.
Authors: We put this information to discussion part.
Line 206 International journals usually use periods instead of commas for decimal points. Same with other graphs.
Authors: We changed all of the graphs to the correct format.
Line 210 Change "smallest soil moisture fixed" to "lowest soil moisture was". I think the second sentence is unnecessary because it is clear in the graph.
Authors: We made provided changes.
Line 213 Change this sentence to "The site at 23 years following fire marked a transition to recovery within the fire-impacted area."
Authors: We changed the sentence.
Line 216 I would just skip this sentence and say that the site with the longest time since fire has the highest soil moisture, as all of these results are clear in the figure. Combine all of these sentences into one paragraph.
Authors: We rephrased this part and made one paragraph.
Line 223 I do not understand the first sentence. I would rewrite the paragraph, "The patterns of CO2 flux over the chronosequence was similar to that of soil moisture. The regression analysis showed an increase in emission rates over time (R2 = 0.93). The maximum fluxes at each site was in the middle of July. The lowest soil CO2 emission rates were in the earliest (middle of June) and latest (middle of September) measurements."Otherwise I would delete the next paragraph, as it is hard to put these in groups when there are no replicates.
Authors: We changed the last part of 3.2 subsection. We deleted that paragraph with grouping. However, we decided to mention here specific characteristics of the measurement sites because that was one of the main idea of our study.
Line 270 Change "is" to "are".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 271 Change "1 and 23" to "1, 23,".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 272 Change "0.4 that means" to "0.4, meaning".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 281 Why are there no results (figure) to do with the statement, "Relations with soil moisture regime are opposite to soil temperature for burned sites."?
Authors: For this statement was presented the Figure 7b – Dependence soil emission from soil moisture. “Opposite” in this context mean that with rising soil moisture the soil emission rates increase up to the optimal value (around 0.3 m3 m-3) and then we observed the decline in the soil emission.
Line 282 Change sentence to, "For sites longer than 14 years following fire, CO2 emissions first increased then decreased within increasing soil moisture (Figure 7b)."
Authors: We changed this sentence.
Line 283 Change "again showed the similar" to "was similar".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 284 Change "stages" to "stage". Change the following sentence to "The highest CO2 emissions appear to be around 0.3 m3 m-3 [42]."
Authors: We made these changes.
Line 290 Change sentence to "From the chronosequence sites the two lowest organic matter sites were the ones most recently burned (Table 2)" if that is correct.
Authors: In this sentence we meant another meaning that the lowest organic matter in two pools (O-horizon and lichens) observed at the site 1 year after fire. We changed that sentence to make it clearer.
Line 291 Add "were" after concentrated.
Authors: In this case maybe you meant “before”?
Line 292 Change to "The O-horizon contained . . ."
Authors: We changed it.
Line 306 I do not understand this sentence.
Authors: We rephrased this sentence.
Line 307 Change to, "The analysis showed that seasonal soil CO2 emissions had a lower correlation with organic matter in the O-horizon than in the lichen ground cover."
Authors: We changed it.
Line 309 This sentence would be appropriate in the Discussion.
Authors: We deleted this sentence.
Line 315 This is repetition of the Results.
Authors: We deleted this sentence.
Line 319 This sentence is a better beginning to the Discussion section.
Authors: We started the Discussion from this sentence.
Line 320 The sentence beginning "The main emission values . . ." and the rest of the paragraph is repetition of the Results.
Authors: We deleted this sentence.
Line 326 This sentence/paragraph does not add much, as it does not address changes in carbon or CO2 emissions over time.
Authors: We agree with you. We deleted this sentence.
Line 329 I suggest rewriting, "In contrast to our study, in a Canadian boreal forest, CO2 emissions were three times higher at 16 years after a fire than at the site 32 years after fire."
Authors: Thank you for your suggestion! We changed this sentence in text.
Line 332 I do not know what is meant by "scars" - burned areas? I think the sentence beginning, "Interestingly . . ." should be a new paragraph.
Authors: Yes, you understood correctly. Scars are another term for burned areas. And we agree with your second point.
Line 337 What would be the mechanism by which windfall would cause CO2 emissions to be lower than expected?
Authors: We added the additional explanation and link to the interesting study may explain this finding.
Line 342 It might be helpful to mention what this means in terms of the fire return interval.
Authors: This information you may find in the first sentence of this paragraph: “The defined time of ecosystem transition in 23 years after fire is the period which shows the characteristics and behavior of the site as an undisturbed ecosystem”.
Line 348 Change "It was fixed that after . . ." to just "After . . .".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 358 It does not make sense to me how more dead wood and debris would cause more solar radiation. Do you mean that the wind storm opened the tree canopy and allowed more solar radiation?
Authors: Yes, that’s what we and other authors [46] meant.
Line 368 Change "we may fix the called" to "there has been observed the".
Authors: We changed it.
Line 372 Change to "After 23 years since fire there the soil emission rates remained relatively constant" if that is what you mean.
Authors: In this sentence we meant another thing. And we tried to make clearer for you and readers: “After 23 years since fire there is a boarder, when the increased soil water content allows detecting optimal soil moisture range for max efflux.”
Line 373 I suggest changing to just "During the summer season, moisture conditions have an especially strong role in regulating soil emission dynamics." if that is right.
Authors: We changed this sentence to the version you suggested.
Line 381 I suggest changing to " to one fourth of that in the 121 years since fire area."
Authors: We corrected this part of the sentence.
Line 385 I suggest changing to "Between 46 years and 121 years following the fire the emission fluxes increased 30%" if that is right.
Authors: Yes, your meaning is right. We changed this sentence in text.
Line 390 "1, 23 years, and older" seems like the whole chronosequence.
Authors: In this sentence we meant exactly what there said. And as you can see we missed one stage – 14 years after fire, because at that site we found other dependence with moisture. This information we mentioned in the next sentence.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
I did my best to correct the English. There is still English that is not exactly standard, but it is comprehensible.
Authors: We really appreciate your corrections.
With the best regards,
The team of authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
