Leaf Phenology Drives Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Throughfall under a Single Quercus castaneifolia C.A.Mey.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The  authors  improved the conclusions as recomended.

Author Response

The authors improved the conclusions as recomended.

Response: Thanks for your suggestions and approval of our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

In the revised manuscript “Leaf Phenology Drives Spatio-temporal Patterns of Throughfall under a Single Quercus castaneifolia” the authors describe the throughfall pattern under one Quercus castaneifolia tree in great detail and with quite complex spatio-temporal analysis but based on very limited data.

Compared to the first version of the manuscript, the English language has been improved. Also, the layout of the tables is better now.

Not unexpected, no great improvement in the dataset was delivered even though this would be very helpful for the manuscript. But it would require additional measurements which can be hard to conduct.

Rather surprisingly though, even some minor suggestions to improve the analysis (e.g. to also check the relationship between relative throughfall and rainfall for the leafed season alone in figure 2 or to use the same scale and colours for figures 6a and 6b to improve comparability) were ignored, which is quite disappointing and should be corrected.  

Author Response

In the revised manuscript “Leaf Phenology Drives Spatio-temporal Patterns of Throughfall under a Single Quercus castaneifolia” the authors describe the throughfall pattern under one Quercus castaneifolia tree in great detail and with quite complex spatio-temporal analysis but based on very limited data.Compared to the first version of the manuscript, the English language has been improved. Also, the layout of the tables is better now. Not unexpected, no great improvement in the dataset was delivered even though this would be very helpful for the manuscript. But it would require additional measurements which can be hard to conduct.

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestions for improving our manuscript. We recognize that the number of events specially in the leafless period is not ideal, but, using an intensive sampling plan valuable data can be gleaned from examinations of throughfall patterns. As we already pointed out, we did note in the Introduction section that one problem in conducting a research project such as this one involves the need for intensive manual labor resources.  The funding and the resources were not available beyond the time period throughfall was collected in this study. Of course, we definitely consider more data for our research in the future.

Rather surprisingly though, even some minor suggestions to improve the analysis (e.g. to also check the relationship between relative throughfall and rainfall for the leafed season alone in figure 2 or to use the same scale and colours for figures 6a and 6b to improve comparability) were ignored, which is quite disappointing and should be corrected.

Response: Thanks for your thoughtful comments! Actually, there were larger storms during the leafless period than the leafed period which is why we combined the rainfall dataset for Figure 2. However, we have checked the relationship between relative throughfall and rainfall for the leafed season in the revised paper as well. We also have re-written the related paragraph in the manuscript (text in red).

Besides, the color scale on Figure 6 has been changed to improve the ability to visualize the correlation between leafed and leafless periods.

Reviewer 3 Report

Please pay attention to the graph in Fig. 2. The line numbers (this time 174, 175 and 176) are displayed quite illogically and disturbingly inside in graph.

Fig. 6 correlation of results for CV = 25.5% and CV = 17.2% is not completely pure. E.g. 70% on the scale of the upper image is yellow-green and on the scale of the lower image it is orange.

Both of these comments have one thing in common - the results can confuse the reader.

The study deals with one type of tree in both the leafed and leafless periods. I recommend the continuation of measurements for other types of woody plants with the application of the established methodology and the subsequent correlation of the obtained results. In a comprehensive sense, a higher scientific level will also be achieved.

Author Response

Please pay attention to the graph in Fig. 2. The line numbers (this time 174, 175 and 176) are displayed quite illogically and disturbingly inside in graph. Fig. 6 correlation of results for CV = 25.5% and CV = 17.2% is not completely pure. E.g. 70% on the scale of the upper image is yellow-green and on the scale of the lower image it is orange. Both of these comments have one thing in common - the results can confuse the reader.

Response: The numbers 174-176 in Figure 2 are line numbers. They are in the left side in Word, I don’t know why they were in disorder and entered into figure 2 when the file is converted to PDF. In the revised manuscript, we insert pure figure rather than Excel file, the problem would not occur when the paper is converted into PDF. In addition, we have revised Figure 6 and used the some colours for Figures 6a and 6b.

The study deals with one type of tree in both the leafed and leafless periods. I recommend the continuation of measurements for other types of woody plants with the application of the established methodology and the subsequent correlation of the obtained results. In a comprehensive sense, a higher scientific level will also be achieved.

Response: Thanks for your constructive suggestions, which provide a research idea for our future study. We will do similar but deeper research in the future.