Forest Leaf Mass per Area (LMA) through the Eye of Optical Remote Sensing: A Review and Future Outlook
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article “Forest leaf mass per area (LMA) through the eye of optical remote sensing: a review and future outlook” addresses a topic of great notoriety and of interest to the scientific community. Remote sensing is a widely used tool, supporting territorial management and political decision-making. Therefore, this article is suitable for being published in remote sensing, however, the authors need to improve several aspects.
Overall, the article addresses the main themes and challenges of remote sensing, however, the quality of the text is sometimes too general (eg. Line 678-683), conveying little relevant information. I suggest that the authors add some concrete examples to improve the transmission of ideas and abbreviate some ideas that are widely known to readers of the Journal Remote Sensing.
Bibliographic references should be used as auxiliary sources, but they do not replace the need to present concrete data. The reader should not feel the need to consult them to understand what the authors mean.
As this is a review article, I agree with the structure of the text, however it is necessary that the authors look again at the formatting of texts in Remote Sensing. Editing rules must be respected. For example:
Line 74 – Add a period at the end of the sentence.
Lines 312, 352, 381, 432, 482, 521, 564 and 605 – Remove the bold caption and put it in italics.
In order to enrich some of the ideas presented, I suggest that the authors consult the following articles:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13132565
https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3040065
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12070817
Author Response
Reviewer 1:
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
Comment: The article “Forest leaf mass per area (LMA) through the eye of optical remote sensing: a review and future outlook” addresses a topic of great notoriety and of interest to the scientific community. Remote sensing is a widely used tool, supporting territorial management and political decision-making. Therefore, this article is suitable for being published in remote sensing; however, the authors need to improve several aspects.
Response: The authors thank the reviewer for the insightful comments that improved the quality of the manuscript. The key aspects mentioned by the reviewer were improved as outlined below.
Comment: Overall, the article addresses the main themes and challenges of remote sensing; however, the quality of the text is sometimes too general (eg. Line 678-683), conveying little relevant information. I suggest that the authors add some concrete examples to improve the transmission of ideas and abbreviate some ideas that are widely known to readers of the Journal Remote Sensing.
Response: Thank you for this important note. The content on the challenges of hybrid models (lines 669-682) were primarily summarized because similar challenges are identified for both empirical and physical models whose challenges were explained in detail in Section 5.4 , lines 592-669-675 . The hybrid method in itself was described in Section 5.3 Line 555-590. Following the reviewer’s recommendation, the authors added content and references to the challenges of the hybrid models. Please see Page 19 lines 670-683. Additionally we removed some general ideas from the manuscript as suggested by the reviewer. Please see Section 3 and 4.3 as an example.
Comment: Bibliographic references should be used as auxiliary sources, but they do not replace the need to present concrete data. The reader should not feel the need to consult them to understand what the authors mean.
Response: Thank you very much for this comment. Concrete data for key studies are summarized in Table 2. The spectral data, sensor, the techniques and the scale together with the main findings of each reference are illustrated in Table 2. The authors in most instances provided similar information i.e. spectral data, sensor, technique and main finding obtained when a reference was cited (for example, Line 83-85, 255-259 and throughout the manuscript). In its current form, readers will be able to understand the concepts presented without needing to refer to the original references.
Comment: As this is a review article, I agree with the structure of the text, however it is necessary that the authors look again at the formatting of texts in Remote Sensing. Editing rules must be respected. For example:
Response: We thank the reviewer for appreciating the structure of the manuscript. The editing rules for Remote Sensing were adhered to and corrections were performed throughout the manuscript. In addition, the manuscript was fully proofread again to correct any spelling/grammatical errors.
Line 74 – Add a period at the end of the sentence.
Response: A period was added at the end of the sentence (Line 74).
Comment: Lines 312, 352, 381, 432, 482, 521, 564 and 605 – Remove the bold caption and put it in italics.
Response: Bold captions were italicized
Comment: In order to enrich some of the ideas presented, I suggest that the authors consult the following articles:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13132565
https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3040065
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12070817
Response: The authors reviewed the suggested papers and appreciate the concepts discussed in these papers and got ideas to improve the manuscript. However, the authors observed that none of the papers suggested focused on remote sensing of leaf traits nor they were review papers, thus the authors decided not cite the suggested papers in the manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript consists of a dissertation on Leaf Mass per Area (LMA),
Leaf Density (LD) and Leaf Volume to Area (LVA) and different approaches at different scales to achieve these values.
It is well written and documented and could serve as a basis for new researchers in this area.
No further comments.
Author Response
Reviewer 2:
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
Comment: This manuscript consists of a dissertation on Leaf Mass per Area (LMA), Leaf Density (LD) and Leaf Volume to Area (LVA) and different approaches at different scales to achieve these values.
It is well written and documented and could serve as a basis for new researchers in this area.
No further comments.
Response: The authors thank the reviewer for the positive evaluation of the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper present a review study on the retrieval of LMA from remote sensors, which is innovative. The study is written clearly and provides a nice orverview of the problem. I do not feel to suggest any improvement, being this manuscript- to my opinion- ready for publication.
Author Response
Reviewer 3:
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
Comment: This paper present a review study on the retrieval of LMA from remote sensors, which is innovative. The study is written clearly and provides a nice overview of the problem. I do not feel to suggest any improvement, being this manuscript- to my opinion- ready for publication.
Response: The authors thank the reviewer for the positive feedback of the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors provided the necessary clarifications to all the questions raised.
As I have no further questions, I consider that the article can continue the acceptance process for publication in the journal Remoting Sensing.
