The manuscript has now been reviewed by two external referees and the handling associate editor. All agreed that the manuscript is acceptable for publication but suggested several points that could be improved. The authors addressed these concerns during the discussion and are encouraged to prepare a revised manuscript by taking the discussion into account.

In addition to the comments and suggestions made by the referees, the following issues require the authors' attention:

- Rephrase the objectives as a hypothesis. The current objectives are basically a (very short) summary of the methods but it is not clear what can be learned from this study. Rephrasing the objectives as a hypothesis will overcome repetition and should indicate to the reader what (s)he can learn from the study.
- Fig 1. subplot b is meaningless without a legend for the grey scales in the background. Link the symbols to the vegetation types in subplots c to f, for example, red triangles denote dwarf shrubs as shown in in Fig 1 (e). Looks like that is what you were trying to do but I could not figure it out.
- The description of the vegetation is very detailed but the information is not used in support of the findings. Focus on the essential elements/characteristics of the vegetation structure. A small table could also help to present the differences between the sites in a more concise way.
- The decision to report the results in two separate studies, i.e., a ''data'' and a ''model'' manuscript weakens the data-manuscripts because some of the hypothesis could have been confirmed or rejected by making use of the model (see also reviewer 2). Where relevant the authors should cite their own modeling study and discuss the consequences.