Rainfall Partitioning in Chinese Pine (Pinus tabuliformis Carr.) Stands at Three Different Ages

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall comments

Though there are many papers on rainfall interception, it is not unclear what kinds of forest structure dictates the evaporation phenomenon. The manuscript is focused on dependence of canopy interception on stand age, and it is obviously shown canopy interception increased with increasing stand age. The results significantly contribute to forest hydrology, and I think the paper is worth publishing Forests.

However, there are many minor points to be corrected before the acceptance except for the quality of English; I am not a native speaker but I corrected some part of the text.

Specific comments

Please refer to the attached file.

I have converted PDF file into MS Word to make the annotated file, but some parts were garbled. Nonetheless, I think it is readable.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Rainfall partitioning in Chinese pine (Pinus tabuliformis )  stands at three different ages”. We thank the Referee for the insightful and helpful comments. Below are our responses to these concerns. I hope the corrections meet with your approval.

 

 

Response 1: I apologise for this terrible error. Meteorological data were given by Pingquan County Meteorological Bureau, partly because I downloaded data from China national Meteorological Information Center used for InVEST model, and I have revised this part.

 

 

Point 2: Please specify the location (longitude and latitude) of the sites along with the altitudes.

 

Response 2: Thank you for your advice, longitude, latitude and altitudes have been added to table 1.

 

 

 

Response 3: All the units were checked and added in the table 1.

 

Point 4: Define the separation time of a rain event, e.g. 6 hours.

 

Response 4: I appreciate for your comment. rain event was defined and added. A single rainfall event was classified as rain exceeding 0.5mm during a period with more than 6 h from last rainfall event.

 

Point 5: How many trees were selected at each age?

 

Response 5: Thanks for your concern. Five trees were selected for stemflow monitoring in each plot, a total of 15 trees in all.

 

 

Response 6: I have replaced all instances of“rate” with “ratio” to conform to the Reviewer’s suggestion.

 

 

Response 7: I have added information for SPSS, and for Origin a reviewer suggested to delete this so I have deleted this analysis.

 

 

Response 8: legend for fitting lines or curves was added in this version.

 

Point 9:Table4: Unify the significant figures. For example, in the model for Tf, "50 yry = 0.8639x - 1.64", 0.8639 is shown the fourth decimal point, but 1.64 the two decimal point.

 

Response 9: According to the Reviewer’s suggestions, I have carefully checked and unified the figures with fourth decimal point.

 

Point 10: figure 4: The label of the y–axis should be replaced with "Rainfall partitioning (%)"

 

Response 10: The label of the y–axis has been replaced with "Rainfall partitioning (%)"

 

 

Response 11: I have considered this comment carefully and deleted table 5 and added “Mean leaf angle" to Table 1.

 

And thank you very much for your advices and for language expression to improve the paper quality.I greatly appreciate for Reviewers’ work, and hope that the corrections will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Yours sincerely,

 

Lingling

 

 

References:

Calvo-Alvarado, J.C.; Jiménez-Rodríguez,C.D.; Calvo-Obando, A.J.; do Espírito-Santo, M.M.; Gonçalves-Silva, T. Interception of rainfall in successional tropical dry forests in Brazil and Costa Rica. Geosciences. 2018, 8(12), 486. doi:10.3390/geosciences8120486 Sun, X.;Onda, Y;Kato, H.; Gomi, T.; Liu, X. Estimation of throughfall with changing stand structures for Japanese cypress and cedar plantations. Forest Eco. Manag. 2017,402, 145-156. Zhou, B.; Han, H.; Kang, F.; Cheng, X.; Song, Y.; Liu, K.; Li, Y. Characteristics of precipitation distribution in Pinus tabulaeformis plantations under different canopy coverage in Taiyue Mountain. Acta Ecologica Sinica. 2013,33(5), 1645-1653. Ma, C.; Li, X.; Luo, Y.; Shao, M.; Jia, X. The modelling of rainfall interception in growing and dormant seasons for a pine plantation and a black locust plantation in semi-arid Northwest China. J. Hydrol. 2019, 577, 123849. Kermavnar, J.; Vilhar, U. Canopy precipitation interception in urban forests in relation to stand structure. Urban Eco. 2017, 20(6): 1373-1387. Sadeghi, S.M.M.; Attarod, P.; Grant Pypker, T.; Dunkerley, D. Is canopy interception increased in semiarid tree plantations? Evidence from a field investigation in Tehran, Iran. Turk. J. Agric. For. 2014, 38, 792-806. Zabret, K.; RakovecM, J.; Šraj, M. Influence of meteorological variables on rainfall partitioning for deciduous and coniferous tree species in urban area. J. Hydrol. 2018, 558, 29-41. Jiang, H.; Zhao, Y.; Xin, X.; Ma, W.; Li, X.; Sun, C.; Guo, X. Precipitation Distribution Laws of Different Forest Stand in Daxing'anling. J. Soil Water Conser. 2008, 22(6),197-201. Saito, T.; Matsuda, H.; Komatsu, M.; Xiang, Y.; Takahashi, A.; ShinoharaK, Y.; Otsuki, K. Forest canopy interception loss exceeds wet canopy evaporation in Japanese cypress (Hinoki) and Japanese cedar (Sugi) plantations. J. Hydrol. 2013, 507, 287-299. Iida, S.i.; Levia, D.F.; Shimizu, A.; Shimizu, T.; Tamai, K.; Nobuhiro, T.; Kabeya, N.; Noguchi, S.; Sawano, S.; Araki, M. Intrastorm scale rainfall interception dynamics in a mature coniferous forest stand. J. Hydrol. 2017, 548, 770-783. Fang, S.; Zhao,C.; Jian, S.Spatial variability of throughfall in a Pinus tabulaeformisplantation forest in LoessPlateau, China, Scan. J. Forest Res.2016, 31(5), 467-476, DOI: 10.1080/02827581.2015.1092575 Muzylo, A.; Llorens, P.;Valente, F.;Keizer, J.J.;Domingo, F.; Gash, J.H.C. A review of rainfall interception modelling. J. Hydrol. 2009,370(1-4), 191-206. Liang, W.Simulation of Gash Model to Rainfall Interception of Pinus tabulaeformis.Forest Syst.2014)23(2): 300.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Observations and recommendation will be provided in a revised PDF of your draft paper.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Rainfall partitioning in Chinese pine (Pinus tabuliformis ) stands at three different ages”. We thank the Referee for the insightful and helpful comments. Below are our responses to these concerns. I hope the corrections meet with your approval.

Point 1: I suggest include in this paragraph this reference to support your review to include also tropical regions and different mix forest types. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/8/12/486

Response 1: Thank you for this important recommendation. I have download the paper and learned from it, and added in the introduction part.

Point 2: Basic plots information and the measure unit in Table 1 should be checked.

Response 2: I am very sorry for this terrible work in Table 1 of the previous version of the manuscript. I have corrected this concern in the current version. I revised the table both the necessary elements and the unit of these elements.

Point 3: How many selected trees are in each plot for stemflow monitoring, be explicit? How to calculate the rainfall from the sampled trees into plots in mm/area, you must provide a basic explanation about this, since there are several ways to do that and depends on tree density.

Response 3: We thank the Reviewer for noticing this error. Five trees in each plot were selected for stemflow monitoring. And I have carefully revised this part the photos and relating equation were added in this version.

Point 4: Add at the end of the table 2 another line including the Total Rainfall

Response 4: Thank you for this valuable advice. Total rainfall has been listed in the table.

Point 5: Data analysis is confusing, please revise this paragraph.

Response 5: Thank you for this valuable advice. I have revised carefully and resolved this concern.

Point 6: Table 3 must include at least the standard deviation for TF, Sf and I.

Response 6: We thank the Reviewer for noticing this error. Standard deviation should be based on the mean data, the TF, Sf and I in the table was cumulative value, so it is not right for difference analyse, I have deleted the letters in the table. If necessary I can put the mean value as shown in following table.
Table 4. Mean throughfall, stemflow and total interception in mm and percentages with respect to mean gross precipitation of three Chinese forest (n=64) from May-September of 2013 and 2014.

Stand age(years) Tf(mm) Tf% Sf(mm) Sf% I(mm) I%
40 10.56±1.61a 64.3±2.91a 0.10±0.02a 0.37±0.06b 2.74±0.22b 35.33±2.94b
50 9.92±1.56a 58.9±2.76ab 0.15±0.03a 0.56±0.08a 3.32±0.27b 40.54±2.82ab
60 8.93±1.41a 52.86±21.91b 0.07±0.02a 0.23±0.05b 3.48±0.20a 46.91±2.76a

Point 7: There is no point in in using models based in %. In my view all analysis using % have no additional value and yield confusion results that are difficult to explain.

Response 7: Thank you for this valuable advice. I have deleted the models for simulate the relationship between the % with rainfall amount and also the relating graphs.

Point 8: It is no clear how do you make this analysis. I will assume that you are pooling all the data for all plots and stands to conduct this analysis?

Response 8: thank you for your concern on it. YES, I conduct the analysis as what you have said, I least values for each (Tf, Sf and I) of all three age stands as dependent as I want to find the dominant impact factors for Chinese pine forests.

And thank you very much for your advices and for language expression to improve the paper quality. And I greatly appreciate for Reviewers’ work, and hope that the corrections will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Yours sincerely,

Lingling

References:
1. Calvo-Alvarado, J.C.; Jiménez-Rodríguez, C.D.; Calvo-Obando, A.J.; do Espírito-Santo, M.M.; Gonçalves-Silva, T. Interception of rainfall in successional tropical dry forests in Brazil and Costa Rica. Geosciences. 2018, 8(12), 486. doi:10.3390/geosciences8120486
2. Sun, X.; Onda, Y; Kato, H.; Gomi, T.; Liu, X. Estimation of throughfall with changing stand structures for Japanese cypress and cedar plantations. Forest Eco. Manag. 2017, 402, 145-156.
3. Zhou, B.; Han, H.; Kang, F.; Cheng, X.; Song, Y.; Liu, K.; Li, Y. Characteristics of precipitation distribution in Pinus tabulaeformis plantations under different canopy coverage in Taiyue Mountain. Acta Ecologica Sinica. 2013,33(5), 1645-1653.
4. Ma, C.; Li, X.; Luo, Y.; Shao, M.; Jia, X. The modelling of rainfall interception in growing and dormant seasons for a pine plantation and a black locust plantation in semi-arid Northwest China. J. Hydrol. 2019, 577, 123849.
5. Kermavnar, J.; Vilhar, U. Canopy precipitation interception in urban forests in relation to stand structure. Urban Eco. 2017, 20(6): 1373-1387.
6. Sadeghi, S.M.M.; Attarod, P.; Grant Pypker, T.; Dunkerley, D. Is canopy interception increased in semiarid tree plantations? Evidence from a field investigation in Tehran, Iran. Turk. J. Agric. For. 2014, 38, 792-806.
7. Zabret, K.; RakovecM, J.; Šraj, M. Influence of meteorological variables on rainfall partitioning for deciduous and coniferous tree species in urban area. J. Hydrol. 2018, 558, 29-41.
8. Jiang, H.; Zhao, Y.; Xin, X.; Ma, W.; Li, X.; Sun, C.; Guo, X. Precipitation Distribution Laws of Different Forest Stand in Daxing'anling. J. Soil Water Conser. 2008, 22(6),197-201.
9. Saito, T.; Matsuda, H.; Komatsu, M.; Xiang, Y.; Takahashi, A.; ShinoharaK, Y.; Otsuki, K. Forest canopy interception loss exceeds wet canopy evaporation in Japanese cypress (Hinoki) and Japanese cedar (Sugi) plantations. J. Hydrol. 2013, 507, 287-299.
10. Iida, S.i.; Levia, D.F.; Shimizu, A.; Shimizu, T.; Tamai, K.; Nobuhiro, T.; Kabeya, N.; Noguchi, S.; Sawano, S.; Araki, M. Intrastorm scale rainfall interception dynamics in a mature coniferous forest stand. J. Hydrol. 2017, 548, 770-783.
11. Fang, S.; Zhao, C.; Jian, S. Spatial variability of throughfall in a Pinus tabulaeformis plantation forest in Loess Plateau, China, Scan. J. Forest Res. 2016, 31(5), 467-476, DOI: 10.1080/02827581.2015.1092575
12. Muzylo, A.; Llorens, P.; Valente, F.; Keizer, J.J.; Domingo, F.; Gash, J.H.C. A review of rainfall interception modelling. J. Hydrol. 2009, 370(1-4), 191-206.
13. Liang, W. Simulation of Gash Model to Rainfall Interception of Pinus tabulaeformis. Forest Syst. 2014)23(2): 300.

Reviewer 3 Report

The presented article is devoted to the topic - estimation of delayed precipitation (liquid) by the forest canopy. The study involved the exchange of Chinese pine. The authors found that the age of the forest is 40, 50 and 60 years, respectively, 20.4%, 24.8% and 32.8%, respectively.
precipitation.
This means that the increase in the volume of losses is associated with an increase in the area of ​​the leaf surface of the bracket (LA).
The obtained numerical dependences on the number of age groups of Chinese pines.
These dependences have an unconditional scientific and practical interest in climatic and hydrological calculations.
The research results are based on field observations and are well described.
The disadvantages of the work to be corrected include the following:
1. The authors have not adequately described the measurement procedure. it is not clear where the rain sensors were located (they were installed under the crowns or water was collected under the crowns in special funnels);
2. The work on this topic for other coniferous forests performed by other authors has not been analyzed (there are a large number of studies on this topic);
3. The research results are compared with well-known world models for estimating the loss of precipitation on the crowns of stands (Gash, Fan, Jackson, Merriam, Horton models).

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

 

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Rainfall partitioning in Chinese pine (Pinus tabuliformis )  stands at three different ages”. We thank the Referee for the insightful and helpful comments. Below are our responses to these concerns. I hope the corrections meet with your approval.

 

Point 1: The authors have not adequately described the measurement procedure. it is not clear where the rain sensors were located (they were installed under the crowns or water was collected under the crowns in special funnels).

 

Response 1:  I apologise that this part of the manuscript was unclear. I have rewritten this section of the manuscript according to the Reviewer’s suggestion, and detailed methods of measurement were added, especially on stemflow monitoring. I have revised the measurement procedure to make it more specific and easy to understand, rainfall collection gauges for throughfall and stemflow were homemade and set under the crowns, after each rainfall event measured the rain manually. Gross rainfall data was from a meteorological station (CR 1000, Compell ) 1000m away from the plots, automatically monitoring the rainfall amount with a resolution 0.2mm.

Point 2: The work on this topic for other coniferous forests performed by other authors has not been analyzed (there are a large number of studies on this topic).

 

Response 2:  Thank you for this important recommendation. Other coniferous forests on this topic were searched and have listed some in the paper, and analysed the difference and also the similarities with rainfall partitioning results of Chinese pine forest from our study in the discussion part.

Point 3: The research results are compared with well-known world models for estimating the loss of precipitation on the crowns of stands (Gash, Fan, Jackson, Merriam, Horton models).

 

Response 3: Thank you for this valuable advice. Models are much more accurate and reflect the deep interception progress, also require lots of variables used in the model, several of them were lacked in our plots so I do not conduct that analysis. Some results from the modelling were compared with the result in this study. Besides the objective of this paper is to reflect the rainfall partitioning pattern of different Chinese pine age stands, also analysing the influence factors both from the rainfall Characteristic and the stand crown structure, and simulate the rainfall partitioning elements with rainfall amount, further a stepwise analysis was used to find out the dominant impact factors for Chinese pine forest. Further, if model is absolutely necessary to this study then I will try my best to learn and improve the paper quality.

 

I greatly appreciate for Reviewers’ work, and hope that the corrections will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Yours sincerely,

 

Lingling

References:

Calvo-Alvarado, J.C.; Jiménez-Rodríguez,C.D.; Calvo-Obando, A.J.; do Espírito-Santo,  M.M.; Gonçalves-Silva, T. Interception of rainfall in successional tropical dry forests in Brazil and Costa Rica. Geosciences. 2018, 8(12), 486. doi:10.3390/geosciences8120486 Sun, X.;Onda, Y;Kato, H.; Gomi, T.; Liu, X. Estimation of throughfall with changing stand structures for Japanese cypress and cedar plantations. Forest Eco. Manag. 2017, 402, 145-156. Zhou, B.; Han, H.; Kang, F.; Cheng, X.; Song, Y.; Liu, K.; Li, Y. Characteristics of precipitation distribution in Pinus tabulaeformis plantations under different canopy coverage in Taiyue Mountain. Acta Ecologica Sinica. 2013,33(5), 1645-1653. Ma, C.; Li, X.; Luo, Y.; Shao, M.; Jia, X. The modelling of rainfall interception in growing and dormant seasons for a pine plantation and a black locust plantation in semi-arid Northwest China. J. Hydrol. 2019, 577, 123849. Kermavnar, J.; Vilhar, U. Canopy precipitation interception in urban forests in relation to stand structure.   Urban Eco. 2017, 20(6): 1373-1387. Sadeghi, S.M.M.; Attarod, P.; Grant Pypker, T.; Dunkerley, D. Is canopy interception increased in semiarid tree plantations? Evidence from a field investigation in Tehran, Iran. Turk. J. Agric. For. 2014, 38, 792-806. Zabret, K.; RakovecM, J.; Šraj, M. Influence of meteorological variables on rainfall partitioning for deciduous and coniferous tree species in urban area. J. Hydrol. 2018, 558, 29-41. Jiang, H.; Zhao, Y.; Xin, X.; Ma, W.; Li, X.; Sun, C.; Guo, X. Precipitation Distribution Laws of Different Forest Stand in Daxing'anling. J. Soil Water Conser. 2008, 22(6),197-201. Saito, T.; Matsuda, H.; Komatsu, M.; Xiang, Y.; Takahashi, A.; ShinoharaK, Y.; Otsuki, K. Forest canopy interception loss exceeds wet canopy evaporation in Japanese cypress (Hinoki) and Japanese cedar (Sugi) plantations. J. Hydrol. 2013, 507, 287-299. Iida, S.i.; Levia, D.F.; Shimizu, A.; Shimizu, T.; Tamai, K.; Nobuhiro, T.; Kabeya, N.; Noguchi, S.; Sawano, S.; Araki, M. Intrastorm scale rainfall interception dynamics in a mature coniferous forest stand. J. Hydrol. 2017, 548, 770-783. Fang, S.; Zhao,C.; Jian, S.Spatial variability of throughfall in a Pinus tabulaeformisplantation forest in LoessPlateau, China, Scan. J. Forest Res.2016, 31(5), 467-476, DOI: 10.1080/02827581.2015.1092575 Muzylo, A.; Llorens, P.;Valente, F.;Keizer, J.J.;Domingo, F.; Gash, J.H.C. A review of rainfall interception modelling. J. Hydrol. 2009,370(1-4), 191-206. Liang, W.Simulation of Gash Model to Rainfall Interception of Pinus tabulaeformis.Forest Syst.2014)23(2): 300.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

see the attach pdf

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Rainfall partitioning in Chinese pine (Pinus tabuliformis )  stands at three different ages”. We thank the Referee for the insightful and helpful comments. Below are our responses to these concerns in second round. I hope the corrections will further meet with your approval.

 

Point 1: Line 115: Table 1. To simplify this table, I suggest changing the title and deleting the first column that does not add valuable information.
Table 1. Basic structural characteristics of the three sampling plots of the Chinese pine
forest of 40, 50 and 60 years old of age.

Response 1: Thank you for your useful advice, I have deleted the first column and changed the tittle.

 

Point 2: Line 124. There is typo error.

Response 2: I am very sorry for my terrible work, I have corrected this concern in the current version.

 

Point 3: Line 191. Table 3. adjust brackets

Response 3: We thank the reviewer for noticing this error. I adjusted the brackets to a better position for good looking.

 

 Point 4: Line 193-200. I suggest this improved paragraph. During the 2 years of the observation period, the accumulated rainfall division in (mm) and (%) showed different results among the three forest stands (Table 4). In each plot, Tf corresponded to the highest proportion of the total rainfall, while Sf was always the lowest proportion. Tf showed an expected decrease trend from 40 to 60 years. Stemflow (Sf), on the other hand, did not show an obvious trend, since the 50-year-old stand resulted in the highest value among the three-year stands. Total interception (I), in the other hand, behaved similarly to Tf. An additional analysis, based on the 64 sample drainfall events (mm), showed that "I" was the only variable that proved to have a significant statistical difference among the three forest stands, being the 60 years plot significantly greater than that of 40 and 50 years.

Response 4: Thank you very much for your important help with English express for this paper, I have revised this part as you suggested..

 

Point 5: Line 206-208.I suggest to improved paragraph.
Monthly rainfall distribution patterns for two years (Figure 3) showed that throughfall,
stemflow and interception amount of three age stands in June and August were larger
than the other three months, consistent with the precipitation pattern of this region ???.

Response 5: Thank you for this valuable advice. I want to express the rainfall partitioning pattern change with month like the total precipitation change in different month, but as you said I did not wrote the rainfall change pattern across the month before in the rainfall pattern part so I delete this sentence.

 

Point 6: Line 216. Change the title of figure 3.
 Figure 3. Amount of throughfall, stemflow and interception for five different months during the study study period.

Response 6: We thank the reviewer’s advice. I have changed the title of figure 3 as you suggested.

 

Point 7: Line 237. Change the title of figure 4.

Linear relationship between throughfall, stemflow, interception with gross rainfall for three Chinese pine forest stands. Total of 64 events. △ 40 years, ○ 50 years, × 60 years.

Response 7: Thank you for this valuable advice. I have changed the title of figure 4 as you suggested.

 

Point 8: Line 240. Change the title of table 5.
Linear relationship between throughfall, stemflow, interception with gross rainfall for
three Chinese pine forest stands. Total of 64 events. △ 40 years, ○ 50 years, × 60 years.
Can you at least include in this table F and P. See example
Line 240. You included this table 5. You must include a small text explaining this table. I
noticed that you use the results of this table in the discussion section. Then it is important
to provide a brief description before the table is included.

Response 8: Thank you for this valuable advice. I have changed the title of table 5 as you suggested. And I have put the F, P and SE value in the table. Further, I have added some sentence to depict the figure in order to further discussion.

The interception and rainfall had binominal function relationship, with coefficient of determination > 0.67.

 

Point 9: Line 250. you mean rainfall intensity classes?

 

Response 9: Thank you for your concern, in this paper rainfall intensity was in 4 intensity classes according to Criteria for Classification of Rainfall Intensity (Inland) produced by China’s Meteorological Administration, and if not appropriate then I will revise this part.

 

Point 10: Line 269. Adjust the columns of table

 

Response 10: Thank you for this valuable advice. I have adjusted columns of table to a better position for good looking.

 

 

Point 11: Line 317-318. Change this paragraph.
According to Table 5, linear regression equations between the rainfall amount (x) and
throughfall amount (y) showed positive coefficients of determination (R2)>0.97, whereas
for stemflow the coefficients of determination were R2>0.79.

 

Response 11: I have changed the paragraph as you advised, thank you for your help with my manuscript.

And thank you very much for your advices and for language expression to improve the paper quality. And I greatly appreciate for Reviewers’ work, and hope that the corrections will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Yours sincerely,

 

Lingling

Author Response File: Author Response.docx