Dear Dr. Bond-Lamberty,

First of all, I would like to thank you for contributing your manuscript to our special issue titled “Impacts of Extreme Climate Events and Disturbances on Carbon Dynamics”. Now I have received two reviews along with your revision and response letter. After reading the two versions, reviewers’ comments, and your response, I feel that a moderate revision will benefit the manuscript.

I agree with Reviewer #1 that the model results should be compared against tower-derived GPP and ER and it might help explain the trajectory of modeled NEP. I do understand that GPP and ER are not directly observed at the flux towers and can have large uncertainty, but these data are quite useful and have been widely used. I suggest that you conduct this additional analysis and then add two plots into Fig. 2 and additional text into the Results and Discussion sections. The limitations of tower GPP and ER data can be included into the discussion. I believe that this relatively small effort will strengthen the paper and also broaden its audience.

The authors conclude that most ecosystem models will not simulate the effects of moderate disturbance well. This is probably right. Still, there is no evidence for this as the authors only evaluated 3 ecosystem models. It might also cause backfire from modelers. I would like to see that the authors limit their speculation/conclusions to the three models they evaluated. I suggest that the sentence on Lines 40-42 and other relevant statements be rephrased.

For Figs 2 and 5, it is kind of hard to tell ED from ZELIG. The differences in the dashed lines are subtle. I would use colors or at least gray vs black to better differentiate ED from ZELIG.

For parameter optimization, did you use a prior range for each parameter? If so, the prior ranges should be included in the table; it will also help to describe how you define the range for each parameter (e.g., expert knowledge, the literature).

Finally, as most papers of the special issues have been published or accepted, I would like to see the new papers cite the relevant published/accepted papers in the issue if appropriate. The papers published can be found at: http://www.biogeosciences.net/special_issue124.html. An accepted relevant paper is: Wang et al.: http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/11/8789/2014/bgd-11-8789-2014.html.

Overall, I think that this is a very interesting study and will be a useful contribution to the special sisue and the scientific literature. I look forward to receiving the revision.

Sincerely,

Jingfeng Xiao, PhD
Guest Editor, Biogeosciences
Earth Systems Research Center
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space
University of New Hampshire
Email: j.xiao@unh.edu
http://globalecology.unh.edu
Tel: (603) 862-1873; Fax: (603) 862-0188

Dear Dr. Bond-Lamberty,

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript titled “Moderate forest disturbance as a stringent test for gap and big-leaf models” is accepted for publication in Biogeosciences. The acceptance of the paper is contingent upon the following technical correction: Remove “many” on Line 485 as the study only evaluated 3 ecosystem models. Please make the correction prior to the uploading of the final manuscript files for publication.

Thank you for contributing to our special issue - Impacts of Extreme Climate Events and Disturbances on Carbon Dynamics.

Sincerely,

Jingfeng Xiao, PhD
Guest Editor, Biogeosciences
Earth Systems Research Center
Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space
University of New Hampshire

Email: j.xiao@unh.edu
http://globalecology.unh.edu
Tel: (603) 862-1873; Fax: (603) 862-0188