Dear authors,
based on your responses to the two reviewers I invite you to prepare a revised manuscript. Further to the discussion on the effects of Narea versus Nmass and the role of LMA I recommend you to consider also the paper by Osnas et al. (2013) published in Science.
Best regards,
Michael Bahn

Dear authors,

I apologize for the unexpected delay in the handling of your manuscript, which was due to the fact that the more critical reviewer, who wanted to re-assess your revised manuscript, repeatedly missed the deadline (partly because you had forgotten to include Appendix B in the manuscript). For this reason I have invited another reviewer, who was very supportive of your paper, but pointed out a remaining inconsistency concerning the canopy position of sampled leaves versus your estimate of absorbed PAR. I agree that this is critical, as part of your analysis is based on the relationship of these two parameters. When submitting a revised manuscript please add a cover letter explaining how you have addressed all points raised by the reviewer and make sure to include Appendix B and the associated Table and Figure this time.

Kind regards,

Michael Bahn

Dear authors,

you have convincingly dealt with the (minor) comments of the first reviewer of your revision (Ref #3).
Thank you for responding also to the second review, in spite of its late arrival. I was sorry to realize that you were not willing to account more substantially for these thoughtful comments in your revised manuscript: a more explicit discussion of some of the issues raised by the second reviewer could have yielded an even stronger paper. I nevertheless think that your manuscript has reached a sufficient level of maturity to be accepted for publication in Biogeosciences, and am confident that it will trigger further research and discussion on this important topic. Thank you for submitting your work to the journal.

Best regards,

Michael Bahn