Pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia covering the last 40&thinsp;ka&thinsp;cal&thinsp;BP

Cao, Xianyong; Tian, Fang; Li, Furong; Gaillard, Marie-José; Rudaya, Natalia; Xu, Qinghai; Herzschuh, Ulrike

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1503-2019

Articles | Volume 15, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1503-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Paleoclimate data synthesis and analysis of associated uncertainty...

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1503-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 4

Research article

|

08 Aug 2019

Research article |

| 08 Aug 2019

Pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia covering the last 40 ka cal BP

Xianyong Cao, Fang Tian, Furong Li, Marie-José Gaillard, Natalia Rudaya, Qinghai Xu, and Ulrike Herzschuh

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Aug 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Oct 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Nov 2018
- AC1: 'Response to the first reviewer', Xianyong Cao, 31 Mar 2019
RC2: 'reviewer statement', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 Dec 2018
- AC2: 'Response to the second reviewer', Xianyong Cao, 31 Mar 2019
EC1: 'Data handling review for Pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia during the last 40 ka by Cao et al.', Lukas Jonkers, 13 Dec 2018
- AC3: 'Response to the editor', Xianyong Cao, 31 Mar 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (08 Apr 2019) by Lukas Jonkers

AR by Xianyong Cao on behalf of the Authors (19 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 May 2019) by Lukas Jonkers

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (01 Jul 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have considered most of the comments from the reviewers. They have greatly improved the manuscript. This revised version is now suitable for publication in Climate of The Past. I do have last minor comments and suggestions.
1- Abstract and elsewhere in the text. The authors use the term “invasions” to describe the increase in abundance of new PFTs. The term “invasions” is too strong and I suggest to modify this term by “increase in new PFTs”. All the terms related to “invasions” in the text should be revised in a similar way.
2- I suggest to make clear the links between the research questions related to the “contrary findings of recent ecological change in northern Asia” (second paragraph of the introduction) and the discussion and conclusion sections.
3- Figures 2A and 2C should be revised; a graph is overlapping the map of the study area in each figure.
4- Turnover values have been calculated for the entire Holocene, as a whole. This choice needs to be explained and specified in the method section.
5- How the summary of frequency has been calculated should be specified; figure 3. Is that the number of groups per time window for which an age of primary vegetation change has been recorded?
6- Figure 3 and the related discussion. The groups that failed the broken-stick test are not assumed to be significant. Is that statistically correct to still use these insignificant results? Furthermore, do the authors have been using these groups to calculate the summary of frequency in figure 3? All of this should be specified and discuss (if data are used for discussion). I expect that if the broken-stick test failed, it does not mean that there is no changes but rather we do not have any thoughts about what is happening.
7- Land use influences on the results for the late-Holocene is never discussed. This comment has already been done and needs to be addressed.
8- Data availability. The data that will be available should be specified. It is not clear if the data refer to pollen counts for all sites that have been used for pollen-based vegetation reconstruction or REVEALS estimates only.
9- The authors say that differences between PPEs are not much. Brassicaceae have 2 PPEs, i..e. 7.48 and 0.89, and these values are highly different. I suggest to further discuss the PPEs mean calculation, in particular by discussing the large differences for some taxa.
10- Appendix 3. “Slight changes for abundances of the major plant taxa with different bog radii from 5 m to 500 m”. I would suggest to show a pie chart for each radii and all the taxa. This would better show if changes/differences are important or not.
11- Appendix 6. I suggest to highlight the five site groups in the cluster diagram.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Jul 2019) by Lukas Jonkers

AR by Xianyong Cao on behalf of the Authors (03 Jul 2019) Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (08 Jul 2019) by Lukas Jonkers

Dear Xianyong and co-authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript on land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia. I think your manuscript is now almost ready for publication and I have only a few remaining comments that need to be addressed before formal acceptance.

- include the citations of the data(sets) used in the main reference list (i.e. the publications for Appendix 2 need to be included in the manuscript and those for Appendix 4 need to be moved). Posting the references online is not sufficient as the original data producers are not credited for the appearance of a citation in a pangaea file (such citation don't count). You rely on their work (also for future syntheses), so they should be properly cited. Please also see the instructions for manuscript preparation (https://www.climate-of-the-past.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html), which explicitly mentions the proper citation of data sets.

- I could not find a letter detailing the response to the reviewer and noticed that comment 6 (copied below) was not completely addressed, specifically wrt to the discussion. Please address this comment and provide a description/motivation of the changes together with your revised version.

(6- Figure 3 and the related discussion. The groups that failed the broken-stick test are not assumed to be significant. Is that statistically correct to still use these insignificant results? Furthermore, do the authors have been using these groups to calculate the summary of frequency in figure 3? All of this should be specified and discuss (if data are used for discussion). I expect that if the broken-stick test failed, it does not mean that there is no changes but rather we do not have any thoughts about what is happening.)

And a few final grammar and typing changes. The line numbers below refer to the ms with tracked changes
-L101: change "into" to "to"
-L208: please reword the part in brackets
-L301: change "once" to "ones"
-L464: change "taxon" to "taxa"
-L527: unclear, please reword
-L581: change "an" to "a"

Looking forward to receiving your revised manuscript,

Lukas Jonkers

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AR by Xianyong Cao on behalf of the Authors (15 Jul 2019) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

The high-quality pollen records (collected from lakes and peat bogs) of the last 40 ka cal BP form north Asia are homogenized and the plant abundance signals are calibrated by the modern relative pollen productivity estimates. Calibrated plant abundances for each site are generally consistent with in situ modern vegetation, and vegetation changes within the regions are characterized by minor changes in the abundance of major taxa rather than by invasions of new taxa during the last 40 ka cal BP.