Understanding the Limiting Climatic Factors on the Suitable Habitat of Chinese Alfalfa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I recommend minor revisions, please see below in an attempt to help.

** Line 27: revised the conclusion in more applied way for forest managers.

** Introduction:  The biggest problem of study is occurred n this section, Introduction did not provide sufficient background and include all relevant references. Try to improve it. 

** Line 34: Add some statistics about the planting plant species in China during last decade based on green project.

** Figure 2: This figure and table 2 are the same. Remove this figure. 

** Lines 230-233: Show how your findings are important for Chinese forest managers?  Maybe its important for planting date, or ...?

** Line 253: I would like to see suggestion of authors for future analysis? What is the gap of your study? 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript uses the Maxent model to describe the climatic niche for Chinese alfalfa. This is an important plant and indeed, its climatic niche is not yet described quantitatively accurately. Therefore this manuscript represents an important contribution to this area of research. The data collection is based on credible sources and the authors use only already well tested modelling and mapping methods, therefore I cannot doubt the validity of their results. The discussion and inferred conclusions seem to be reasonable and well-based on the knowledge of current literature on this topic. The text is generally clear and well-written. In general, I have no concern about the quality of this work and recommend its eventual publication after minor changes (below).

Lines 76-77: Unclear, do you mean “we uploaded the coordinates of the Chinese alfalfa presence points to MaxEnt along with 19 climate variables”?

Line 129: change to “non-distinct dry spell”

Line 184: change to “the climatic”

Line 196: change ‘objective’ to ‘objectively’

Lines 220-221: unclear English, please edit properly

Line 223-224: change to “This can be explained by competitive exclusion of Chinese alfalfa by productive dominant species under high rainfall”

Lines 224-228: ? what is the relation with Medicago sativa? Seems to be irrelevant to me unless you add proper explanations, or delete these lines.

Lines 229-230: change “Understanding the limiting factors of species has important enlightenment significance for rational management and management of alfalfa” to “Understanding the limiting factors of species is important to restoration management with alfalfa”

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx