Tropical climate–vegetation–fire relationships: multivariate evaluation of the land surface model JSBACH

Lasslop, Gitta; Moeller, Thomas; D'Onofrio, Donatella; Hantson, Stijn; Kloster, Silvia

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5969-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 19

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5969-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5969-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 19

Research article

|

11 Oct 2018

Research article |

| 11 Oct 2018

Tropical climate–vegetation–fire relationships: multivariate evaluation of the land surface model JSBACH

Gitta Lasslop, Thomas Moeller, Donatella D'Onofrio, Stijn Hantson, and Silvia Kloster

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Oct 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Jan 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review Lasslop et al 2018 BioGeoDisc', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Feb 2018
- AC1: 'reply to reviewer comments', Gitta Lasslop, 23 May 2018
RC2: 'Review of Lasslop et al. 2018', Anonymous Referee #2, 02 Mar 2018
- AC1: 'reply to reviewer comments', Gitta Lasslop, 23 May 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (23 May 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

AR by Gitta Lasslop on behalf of the Authors (23 May 2018) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 May 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (23 Jun 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (26 Jun 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Title: Tropical climate-vegetation-fire relationships: multivariate evaluation of the land surface model JSBACH

Authors: Gitta Lasslop, Thomas Moeller, Donatella D’Onofrio, Stijn Hantson, and Silvia Kloster

General Comments:
The revision addresses many of the issues with the first version, but there are still points that need to be revised in the discussion section prior to publication.

Detailed comments:

Discussion:
Page 14 line 10: Update to “NPP turns negative does drought effect the vegetation.”

Page 14 line 9-10: Add in how drought impacts the vegetation currently. What are the effects of drought that take effect after NPP turns negative for 5 years? Diminished productivity? Through percent reduction biomass? Total die-off?

Page 14 line 11-12: “The excessive tree cover could be partly improved by improving the non-vegetated fraction which decreases too fast with increasing precipitation.” The non-vegetated fraction decreases too quickly, implying that the vegetation increases and controlling this vegetation response is important to addressing the excessive tree cover. What could be a mechanism of improvement be for the drought response?

Page 14 line 25: I think you mean “lower sensitivity to fire due to higher bark thickness and taller crown leading to lower probability of crown scorch.” Update.

Page 14 -15, pg14 lines 21 to pg 15 line 14. There are duplicate sentences and redundancies in this paragraph. Improve the organization of the paragraph and remove redundancies. Specifically, the sentence about JSBACH-SPITFIRE and bark thickness is duplicated.

Page 15 line 11: SPITFIRE quantifies fire intensity. Are the fires more frequent and of lower intensity once the tree cover has decreased?

Page 15 line 15-21: Complete this paragraph with a concluding statement of how including saplings and adult long lived trees may impact the balance of tree cover to bare fraction or fire behavior in SPITFIRE.

Page 16 line 7: Update to “…climate models have problems representing extremes…”

Page 16 line 15: “ fire is quite sensitive to the length of dry seasons” add references supporting this statement.

Page 17 line 1-3: The evidence that increases in managed land leads to decreased burned area is supported in the recent literature as referenced in the manuscript. Remove the sentence about roads as a fire break or provide a citation recognizing this link within the tropics. Roads are often a source of ignitions that also impact the spatial variability of burned area (Loboda and Csiszar 2007 RSE; Syphard et al 2007 Eco. Appl.; Syphard et al 2008 Int J Wild Fire; Narayanaraj and Wimberly 2012 Appl. Geog; Faivre et al 2014 Int J Wild Fire). Additionally, there is evidence that forest fragmentation due to land cover change by humans leads to increases in fires. This type of fragmentation is shown to alter micro-climate conditions within forest canopies and lead to increased understory ignitions and fires. (Morton et al 2013 Philos Trans R Soc; Brando et al 2014 PNAS; Soares-Filho B et al. 2012 Landscape Ecol.) This connection is not well represented in models, but, as detailed in these references, representation of forest fragmentation specifically is an important component of capturing the relationship between humans, land use and fire. Further, as demonstrated by and detailed within these references there is an expanding understanding of the relationships between humans, land use and fire. Acknowledge that this research is progressing, alongside the need to improve this representation in models.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (26 Jun 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

AR by Gitta Lasslop on behalf of the Authors (29 Jun 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (02 Jul 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (19 Jul 2018)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (20 Jul 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

AR by Gitta Lasslop on behalf of the Authors (25 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Jul 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (13 Sep 2018)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (14 Sep 2018) by Alexey V. Eliseev

AR by Gitta Lasslop on behalf of the Authors (17 Sep 2018) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

We apply a multivariate model evaluation to the relationship between climate, vegetation and fire in the tropics using the JSBACH land surface model and two remote-sensing data sets, with the aim to identify the potential for model improvement. The overestimation of tree cover for low precipitation and a very strong relationship between tree cover and burned area indicates opportunities in the improvement of drought effects and the impact of fire on tree cover or the adaptation of trees to fire.