What Makes Agroforestry a Potential Restoration Measure in a Degraded Conservation Forest?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The first aim of the paper focusing on understanding the background of forest degradation of WAR GFP appears to be covered by other publications as was often referred to in the results e.g. Reference No.7. This makes it difficult to understand how the results from this study are different from what was already done.
2. The data collection indicated that 59 respondents were selected from two villages based on two criteria (those who practiced agroforestry and members of forest farmer groups). Is there any justification for this criteria? It would be useful to justify this selection criteria. Moreover aim number two of this paper was to investigate the driving factors of local people to practice agroforestry. It would have been more interesting for the respondent selection criteria to include respondents who did not practice agroforestry to provide a parallel analysis of the driving factors.
3. The map in figure 1 does not provide much information apart from location. This can be deleted.
4. A number of facts presented in the results section especially section 3.1 appear to be what is sourced from literature. There is frequent reference to reference No. 7 and No. 12. It therefore difficult to distinguish the results of this study and what is drawn from literature. It would be appropriate for most of the facts in this section to be transferred to the study area description.
5. A consideration of the driving factors of communities in adopting/developing agroforestry systems, there is reference made to livelihood and poverty under the social-economic-cultural aspects. However, examining the livelihood variables in line 124-128, there seem to be a correlation of these livelihood variables and poverty. it is important to distinguish these two factors. In addition, Figure 3b refers to reduced land cover; How was this assessed?
6. There is repeated presentation of results. For instance line 354-358 under section 3.5 is presenting the same results that are presented in section 3.4. Similarly, results presented in line 525-530 were also earlier presented in section 3.1; In addition the enabling factor presented in section 3.7, some of them are similar to the driving factors presented in section 3.4. How different are the enabling factors from driving factors then?
7. The terminology 'percentage of presence species' is rather difficult to understand and it is used quite often in the manuscript. Is this in reference to species occurrence in a particular plot? 
8. Line 514-515 states that availability of clean water during the dry season was closely related to plant density and tree cover. How was this association determined?

Author Response

"Please see the attachment"

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, the authors provide a new insight in forest conservation and local development. It is interesting topic of agroforestry, especially in the areas with conflicts between development and conservation. The manuscript can fall within the scope of the journal. Generally, the study was well conducted. However, there are still several problems before acceptance for publication.

1) the structure of the manuscript should be improved according to the journal guidance. The authors should separate the results from the discussion to illustrate the main results clearly.

2) The introduction part is weak in supporting research goals and methods in the present manuscript. I suggest the authors should improve the introduction by adding reference review on agroforestry and its drive factors.

3) the conclusion part should be refined by focusing on their major findings and significance.

 

There are still several suggestions for the manuscript.

1)I suggest the authors refine their results description. The current results and discussion section are too lengthy for international readers.

2) Figure 1 should be improved by modifying font size.

3)figure 2 can be provided as appendix.

4)Figure 3, The decimal precision should be reserved to 2 digits uniformly.

5) the number of species can be measured by species richness or related indices. Additionally, the measurement of local and exotic species will better reflect the impact of agroforestry management on biodiversity.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx