Dear authors,

Thank you for yours responses to reviewers. As you saw, the two reviews are positive and conclude on minor revisions. I have carefully read your responses to the reviewers and your propositions to modify the text of your manuscript.

Your paper is very interesting and I appreciate your detailed responses. Nevertheless, your manuscript needs some additional amendments corresponding to some of the comments of the two reviewers and few questions for which I would like your responses.
1- Following the comments of reviewers 2, I think that Bergwinds have to be explained to readers in the text that may be interested on this paper but not familiarized on the studied area.
2- I have some problems with definitions of endmembers as reviewer 1. Probably it will be easier to understand if when describing the endmembers in the corresponding paragraph you separate the different endmembers and their composition by subtitles each one for an endmember and then the correspondence with the previous one. For my part I am a bit lost in this part. In fact I really think as the reviewer 1 that a short table in the main text will be helpful even if we have some details in the supplement with the curves of all taxa presented separately (do the curves of all taxa be in the supplementary figures?). In fact you write the term endmembers in page before define it as the reviewer 1 said. what you add in the matérial and method sections is very short. what do you mean with "characteristic combination? You add a citation of table 1 and table 2 supplementary documents but they are not in the documents given with the responses, I did not find them.
Please explain me what happened and /or produce these tables.
3- Concerning your corrected discussion I have some remarks:
a. In the figures it will be better to indicate glacial and interglacial numbers, sometimes you mark the glacial numbers sometimes the interglacial ones sometimes the terminations. I did not understand the choice (numbering glacial and interglacial or terminations???) in the different figures even in the supplementary ones. Explain me.
b. End of p. 11 (new text) you say that mountain forest is replaced by woodlands in 11c, 9e, 7e, 7c, 5e and 1. First will you mark the in the right order. I do not see that in 7e and 7c. I see only a slight regression of mountain taxa and a slight increase in woodland in these two events.
c. p. 12 first sentence you explain “the record……during those parts of glacial stages”. I do not understand, you were talking about interglacials???? And then the term “those part of the glacials stages” refers to what? I am lost here. Why did you talk about glacial in the description of interglacials? You talk about Podocapus and you cited the fig. 5 why? Podocarpus is not on the figure 5 only in additional figures.
d. Line 4 p.12 you explain that you have mountain forest in the coldest glacial just before the interglacials marked by the replacement between the two types of vegetation so MIS 18, 16, 14, 8, 6 and 2. First, here fig. 5 has to be cited please and it will be helpful to write at least the MIS glacial numbers on the figure).
Have you an explanation for the difference observed in the 12 and 10? They are not so different from the 14.
e. I need also some links between the C4 vegetation, the C4 sedges and the endmembers in the text. In the beginning of the discussion, I understood that the C4 vegetation is represented in you record mainly by sedges. Is it true? Then it mainly corresponds to old EM2 and new E heathland? Is it true? Please add this in some sentences of the discussion to be clear.

Please clarify these points in the discussion and organize the discussion in a different way to be more clear for the reader (first the interglacials and secondly the glacials) and cite the supplementary figures if necessary.
I do not think that these last remarks and comments take a long time to be addressed. So I am waiting after your new text and then will be able to post my final decision on the publication of this very interesting manuscript

With my best regards
Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout

Dear authors,

Thank you for your corrections.
Your paper is now nearly ready to be accepted.

Just a short comment on references:
I see some errors in the references:
I did not found Bereiter et al., 2018 and Swannet al. in the text and Scott, 2002 seems to be absent in the references list.
Have a look au the references of Dupont et el, two are not separated and Dupont, Caley et al, 2011 has to be separated from Dupont, Beug et al, 1989

Best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout